


A City, Divided

by sweettears90



Series: Divided Series [2]
Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Science Experiment, dark au, divergent war, factionless rule, future reality show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:09:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 67,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4771229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweettears90/pseuds/sweettears90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Sequel to Divided City. Jeanine has been captured and Erudite brought to their knees. Evelyn Johnson, leading the Factionless, has brought peace to the city. Sort of. But have they really just replaced one dictator for another? How long can things last under Evelyn’s rule?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, as the summary mentioned, this is a SEQUEL to my story, Divided City, so if you haven't read that, I insist that you go do so or else you'll be hopelessly lost! And for those of you who already have... welcome! There's still a lot of story left.  
> *  
> I just wanted to take a moment to give a special shout-out to eruditeprincess1993 for helping me to proofread everything, and for catching a few canon errors here and there. I appreciate everything that you've done to help me.

Tris watched from the window of her new apartment as the train rumbled past the building. She could see a few people on it, but saw no Dauntless jump on and off from it, even though it was on a low stretch of track. 

She turned away from the window. Dauntless was no more. The factions were no more. 

It had been a week since Evelyn Johnson, Four’s long-lost mother, had led her band of Factionless into Erudite, subdued Jeanine Matthews, and taken over the city. Within an hour, the Factionless had completely dismantled the entire Faction system. 

“It is the reason why things got to the point that they did,” Evelyn had gone on to explain after she’d told everybody that the Factions were no more. “If we continue to push aside the very things that make us human, then we’re more likely to embrace those things as well. Jeanine Matthews did just that to the point where she became an inhuman monster, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands! If we were to take her down, but to allow the Factions to exist… we would only just allow another, power-hungry person just like Jeanine to take in and fill her shoes. And then, we’d be right back to where we’d started!”

Tris had to admit that Evelyn did have a point; it was the reason why the divergents didn’t just storm into Erudite and kill Jeanine on the spot, after all. But she also didn’t think that the Factions had been the problem. After all, the city had existed without any sort of a problem until Jeanine’s predecessor came along and started to spread rumors that the divergents were dangerous. And things only got worse when Jeanine stepped into power and decided that the best way to deal with the divergents would be if the divergents no longer existed. 

And sure, the Factionless had stepped up to the plate and saved everybody in the city when the divergents were too scattered and afraid to do much anything but hide in the tunnels. But that didn’t mean that they could just come in and snap up the power vacuum and declare themselves in charge. 

After a beat, Evelyn started to explain what was going to happen now that there were no more Factions. “We will all take rotations to do the different jobs that need to be done in the city,” she went on. “And, because it would be unfair to expect everybody to live in Faction-sanctioned homes, we’re going to assign new homes to everybody. However, this will take some time, so please be patient while we get things settled out.”

Now Tris was in an apartment in the Candor section of town. She wasn’t quite sure where her parents had been settled, or even Eric. To say that things were strange was a bit of an understatement. 

Somebody knocked on the door, and jarred Tris out from her musings. She went to answer it; most of the people who came to visit her were her new neighbors, who were going around to find out where their friends were. 

“Chad!” Tris exclaimed with glee when she saw that it was her Dauntless friend. 

“It’s good to see you, Tris,” Chad said as he greeted her with a warm hug. “I’m going around to try and figure out where all of us have been scattered to.” He leaned in close to her ear. “It’s not safe to talk about it yet.” 

“I know,” Tris agreed quietly, and then pulled away from him and offered him a warm smile. “Why don’t you come in?” she asked a bit louder. “It’s not much, I know.”

“Just for a moment, but I have things to do,” Chad said as he stepped inside. 

Tris shut the door. Chad went over to her desk, pulled out a piece of paper, wrote something on it against the wall, and then handed it to her. There was an address on it. “Tonight,” he whispered to her. “Midnight. Make sure you aren’t followed.”

Tris quickly memorized the address— it was in the section of town that used to belong to Erudite. Then, she tore off the part with the writing on it and stuffed the paper into her mouth. “The stove is electric,” Tris said around the paper in response to Chad’s bewildered look. He laughed soundly. 

“You are really something, you know that, Tris?” he said as he walked over to the door. “Well, it was nice catching up with you, but, as I said, I’ve other things to do today. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Tris said. She showed him out, and then went to get herself a drink of water from the sink. Paper was very dry. 

 

* * *

Tris slunk through the streets, which were pitch blank thanks to the fact that the curfew was still in effect. Everybody was supposed to be in bed with their lights turned off to conserve energy by now. It was wonderful for having secret midnight meetings, though.

Tris approached the address that Chad had given her, but then circled around the block to make sure that she hadn’t been followed. As she approached the building again, somebody grabbed her from behind. Tris jumped a little at the contact, and tried to come up with some excuse as to why she was wandering around here so late at night. 

“Mom!” Tris exclaimed, and rushed into her mother’s arms. Then, “Dad!” She offered Andrew a quick hug, too, and the two of them hurried into the building. “I’m so glad to see you. It’s been a mess since everything’s happened, and I don’t know where you live now.”

“We’ve been put into what used to be the Erudite section,” Andrew explained as they walked. “Which was why we picked this building, since we know very well that it’s currently empty.” Natalie led them down into a sort of root cellar, where some kegs were hiding in the corner. 

“A brewery? Drinking doesn’t exactly seem very Erudite to drink,” Tris said.

“No, but you’d be surprised what sort of scientific theories had been thought while people were drinking,” Eric said. 

“Eric!” Tris breathed, and then ran over to him. He engulfed her in a huge hug, and then kissed her tenderly. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

They only pulled apart when some other people came into the basement. But neither of them took their hands off from the other; they couldn’t stand to be separated again. 

“Why don’t we take a seat while we wait for the others?” Natalie asked. Andrew and Chad started to pull out some folding chairs that were stacked against the walls and set them up for the others. Tris and Eric sat. 

“Where did they put you?” Tris asked.

“In Candor… or what used to be,” he said with a sneer. 

“I’m in Candor, too,” Tris said quickly. “Over by the bank!”

“Then I’ll come and find you tomorrow,” Eric said, his voice super low. Tris offered him a shy smile, which he quickly returned.

The group waited another fifteen minutes. “This is everybody that I was able to track down,” Chad said once one last person came into the room and Natalie ushered her to have a seat. 

Tris looked around at the people assembled there with some dismay. There were maybe about three dozen people in the room, where as before, there had been maybe a thousand or so divergent. 

“Please, don’t look so horrified,” Chad said quickly in the silence that followed his words. “It’s a big city, and I’m knocking on a lot of doors. People want to talk to me. There’s only so much ground that I can cover.”

“Then we should be out there, trying to track everybody down, too,” Tris spoke up.

“Yes, but a lot of us have been marked by Evelyn as being divergent and likely to stir up trouble,” Natalie said. “Sometimes, the best course of action would be to sit back and let other people take the reins for a while.”

“Wait, what? What did I do?” Tris protested.

“You were in Jeanine’s custody when the Factionless rescued you,” Natalie explained. “Evelyn has since decided that anybody dangerous enough that Jeanine would want to lock up is obviously bad news. They’re keeping a very close eye on the known divergents, but especially those who were being held.”

“So we have a black mark simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Megan spoke up. 

“There isn’t much that we can do about it,” Natalie said gently. “Just keep your heads down while we try to figure out what to do next.”

“And what is next?” Eric asked. 

“Yes, we’re all curious for answers about what that attack was about,” Tris said. Nobody had said a single word about the attack after Evelyn and the Factionless had taken over. In fact, it seemed as though anybody who tried to bring it up was quickly silenced. 

“I’ve done a lot of digging in the days since the Factionless took over,” Natalie started. “It’s a lot of hard work to keep from making too many waves, but in the end, my work has paid off. First things first: As I’m sure that all of you now know, the so-called flu vaccine that Erudite gave to Dauntless days prior to the attack was actually a simple water solution that was swimming with microchips. The very same microchips found in the suspicious suicide victims that Tris and Eric kept finding in Dauntless.”

“The mind-control ones,” Eric said.

“Yes,” Natalie agreed. “After the Dauntless had sent the reports back to Erudite that everybody in the faction had been ‘immunized’, Jeanine started her attack using the Dauntless that were now completely under her control. As they were leaving the Dauntless compound, they were programmed to kill anything that didn’t respond to the microchip programing. Mainly, those who did not received the ‘vaccine’, who, upon hearing the noises outside, came to investigate.” 

Tris turned her face into Eric’s arm. The sights of Nikki’s and Drew’s bloody, lifeless bodies haunted her dreams whenever she tried to get some rest. It could have very easily happened to both her and Eric, which was even worse to think about. 

“Once they left the Dauntless compound, they headed over towards the Abnegation section. There, their mission was a simple seek and destroy one. Most of Abnegation is now dead because of Jeanine,” Natalie went on. 

A long moment of silence followed as everybody reflected on all of the lives lost. 

“Do we know why she was so insistent on killing everybody in Abnegation?” Eric asked, breaking the silence. 

“I have yet to actually find the answer to that question, and, some part of me thinks that Jeanine is the only one who can properly answer that,” Natalie said. “Upon finishing their sweep of the Abnegation section of town, the Dauntless then headed to Candor, where reports are that they started to look for something. While a few people died in Candor, it was not the all-out blood-bath that things had been in Abnegation.” 

There was a beat of silence. Natalie looked over to her husband, and he squeezed her hand. “I know that some of you started to talk while I was gone following the initial Erudite-lead Dauntless attack,” Natalie went on as she returned her attention back to everybody. “And, for the most part, it is all true. It is something that I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you… because I wouldn’t ever need to tell you. But the time for secrets has indeed past. Yes, I was born outside the city, and yes, I was put into the city to help combat first Michael Norton’s disdain for the divergents, and then Jeanine Matthew’s. As you can imagine, my job only got harder and harder the longer I stayed in the city, for the longer I stayed, the worse the situation began to get.”

“What’s outside the city?”

“Why are the divergents so important?”

“How did the divergent rumor even begin in the first place?” People started to talk all at once. 

“BE QUIET!” Eric barked as he surged to his feet. Everybody was quick to fall silent after that. “If you guys would be quiet for two seconds, maybe Natalie will answer all of your questions!” He gestured to Natalie.

“Thank you, Eric,” Natalie said quietly as he took his seat again. “Yes, I do have answers to most of your questions, and maybe some day, I will tell all of you. But right now, our time is limited. As you all know, when the Dauntless showed up to take Abnegation out, I slipped away from my home and went off in search of something. That something was a box that I’d brought into the city. It was the only thing that I was allowed to bring in, and it contained a video file that would explain everything. Before I was placed in the city, I was instructed to only show it to the city as a worst case scenario. However, there was no way that I would be able to keep a close eye on it at all times, so I hid it where I thought that it would be safe.”

“But now it’s missing?” Tris spoke up.

“I looked everywhere for it when Dauntless attacked, only to figure out that the city has changed a lot in the twenty-some years since I was first implanted here,” Natalie agreed quietly. “Buildings were torn down and new ones put up in their place.”

“So the question remains: should we focus our energy on finding the box or on how we can take down the Factionless?” Eric asked after a brief silence. A longer silence stretched out following his question. 

“I truly believe that finding the box is the key to taking down Evelyn,” Natalie finally said. 

“So, those of you who were not in the tunnels nor captured by Jeanine, continue your search for the remaining divergents. The rest of us will keep our heads down but our ears open for news of the box and the files that it contained,” Andrew said. 

“Where exactly did you hide the box?” somebody asked. 

“When I first hid it, it was in a section of town that belonged to Erudite,” Natalie explained. “It was in an air vent of a book store called Minerva’s.”

“Wait, I remember that place,” Eric said slowly. “It closed when I was maybe five or six. The building sat empty for a few months, and then the Erudite leaders had it torn down. First a coffee shop went in, but by the time that I’d transfered to Dauntless, that had been torn down, too, and an apartment building went in.”

“I suppose that it’s too much to ask for that the box somehow ended up back inside both the coffee shop and the apartment building?” Megan asked.

“No, not if it was in an air vent,” Tris said slowly. 

“Everything like building remains gets hauled off to a processing plant where it’s sorted through to determine what can be immediately reused, what needs to be reprocessed in order to be reused, and what cannot be reused at all,” Andrew explained to everybody. “The plant is on the other side of the city… back behind the fields.”

“I always wondered what that building was,” somebody said.

“If the box wasn’t destroyed when the building was torn down, then who knows where the file might have ended up when everything was hauled off to the processing building,” Eric said. 

“It could be anywhere by now,” Tris said.

“Of course, that’s assuming that the box and its contents weren’t destroyed,” Andrew went on. “Even if it somehow survived the bookstore being torn down, somebody along the way might have destroyed the files contained within the box, or even watched it.”

“No, I would know if somebody had watched the files,” Natalie said quickly. “Even though the video on the file was contained on a seemingly ordinary USB stick, the reality is that, as soon as the stick is plugged into any device, it starts to send out a signal. Then, a secondary signal is sent out as soon as the video starts to play.”

“What does the signal do? Send for help or something?” Tris asked.

“The Watchers who sent me into the city told me that I was to use the video as an absolute last resort,” Natalie repeated herself. “They said that things were even worse off than they could have possibly imagined if I needed to play the video.”

“So, you’re saying that you aren’t sure what the signal might do? For all you know, there is no signal,” somebody said. 

“This is also true,” Natalie said. “And while I have an inkling of what might be on the video, I’m not positive on what it’s about.”

“So you want for us to try and track down a file that you lost some twenty years ago, that might have been destroyed at one point or another, and if it still exists, it could literally be anywhere in the city,” Tris said dryly. 

“That about sums it up, yes,” Natalie said with some hesitation. She then heaved an annoyed sigh and hung her head in shame. “To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’ll help to mollify the Factionless.”

“While we all go out and try to find this, maybe we should also start to think about a Plan B,” Eric said after a beat. 

“The Factionless stormed into the tunnels and took all of our weapons,” Andrew said. “They said that they were going to go stop Jeanine and the Erudite, but now, we see that it had double-meaning. We’re now completely weaponless.”

“They’re starting to tear down the Dauntless compound,” Eric went on. “They said that it’s because it’s too enclosed. The future of our city is that we have no secrets, especially not kept in the Dauntless compound.” He gave an annoyed sneer. 

“Then building up our arsenal again is out of the question,” Megan said. “They swooped in and took over everything because they kept their heads down and thought smart. We’re going to have to do the same.”

“I came down here tonight with only the intent to put everybody on the lookout for the missing file,” Natalie said quietly. “But now I see that it’s out of the question. I’m not going to give up hope that I find it, but we should take a week to think of some other plans to get Evelyn and the Factionless out of power. Let’s meet up again in a week? Same time, same place. Somebody will be around to you if we have to change the date, time, or venue. Since we’re regathering our forces after both attacks, it’s going to take some time for us to regain the foothold that we once held. And it’s even worse because the Factionless somehow knew about the tunnel system, and we can no longer use it to sneak around the city easily.”

People stood up and started to slowly trickle out from the building in groups of two or three, just like the old divergent meetings. “So, should we go back to my apartment or yours?” Eric asked Tris in a low voice. 

“I bought condoms the other day, in the hopes that you would come and spend the night,” Tris whispered into his ear. 

“Good, good,” Eric said and gave her a cheeky smile. She leaned over and kissed him, but then stood up after a moment to go say goodbye to her parents.

“I’m happy that you’re both safe,” Tris said. “You’ll have to come and visit me sometime, okay? I’m in the apartment building by the bank.”

“We will,” Natalie said as she warmly hugged her daughter, and then hugged Eric. “I’m happy that both of you are safe, too.” After Tris had hugged her father, Andrew offered Eric a handshake. Then, Eric and Tris started out from the old building. 

“Your father has it out for me I think,” Eric whispered as they crept along the dark street. 

“Why? What did he do?” Tris asked sharply. 

“He just about broke my hand,” Eric complained. Tris only rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly. “Hey, you know what?”

“What?”

“Now that the factions are no more, you finally have a chance to meet my family, too,” Eric said a bit breathlessly. “Oh, I know that you’re going to love Elizabeth. She’s a bit of a wet blanket, but I think that you’ll get along great.”

They continued the rest of the way back to Tris’s new apartment building in silence. Even though there were no guards that patrolled the streets, there were still the cameras that Dauntless used to keep a watch on everything. They were now being monitored by the Factionless. 

Once Tris unlocked the door to her apartment, Eric picked her up and slammed her up against the door so that it closed. He kissed her roughly, and she eagerly returned the kiss. 

“I don’t think that I can properly express just how much that I missed you,” he breathed against her lips. 

“Then maybe you should just show me,” Tris replied coyly. Eric put Tris back down onto the ground and Tris lead him into the bedroom. She shoved him onto the bed and then got up and straddled his lap. Eric quickly pulled Tris’s shirt off before he held her tightly and kissed her soundly. 

“I was so afraid for you, after I was captured,” Eric said after a moment. “Jeanine knew that I’d double-crossed her…”

“You were afraid for me?” Tris asked with some surprise. “Eric, you were in the hands of a trigger-happy psycho, but you were worried about me?”

“Yes, because I knew what my fate was, but I was worried about yours,” Eric said, his gaze lowered. Tris kissed him gently. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered against his lips. “We’re both okay. And we’re here, right now. Jeanine was captured, and even though our future is uncertain, we’re here now, and that’s all that matters.” She pulled away from him and tugged his shirt off. 

Then, she stood up so that she could take her boots and pants off. Eric did the same. A moment later, they were both naked, and Eric pulled Tris into his arms. Together, they fell back onto the bed. They were both content to lie in one another’s arms for a long while and just kiss and touch each other gently, while occasionally whispering about how much that they’d missed the other. 

“God, Tris, I need you right now,” Eric said finally. “Where are the condoms?” 

“In the drawer here,” she said. She sat up to grab them from her nightstand. She pulled one out from the box, quickly opened the packing, and then slid the condom on over Eric’s hard cock. Tris pushed Eric down until he was flat on his back on the bed, and then climbed up on top of him. 

They both groaned lowly when Tris guided his cock to her vagina and she lowered herself down onto him. She rotated her hips for a few seconds, and then she started to move slowly on top of him while bracing her hands on his chest. Eric half sat up and wrapped his arms around her. Tris took the change in Eric’s position to wrap her legs around his waist, and then she turned her face for a searing kiss. 

The pace that they set was exceptionally slow, but both made up for it by touching the other everywhere, and kissing where they could reach. 

“Eric, I’m really close,” Tris gasped out after a long time. 

“Me, too,” Eric whispered against her neck. He pulled away from her slightly so that he could press his fingers against her clit to urge her to her orgasm a little bit faster. As his fingers danced across her sensitive flesh, Tris bit back a strangled cry as she came. Eric’s movements stilled as he came as well a second later. 

Shaking with exhaustion and the after-effects of her orgasm, Tris collapsed against Eric, who fell back against the bed completely. He tightened his hold on her and they lay like that for the longest time, just basking in the afterglow and the fact that they were both alive, unharmed, and together once again. 

Tris had started to drift off to sleep when Eric turned his head slightly and pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “Tris,” he whispered. Tris hummed to show that she was listening. “I love you.”

Tris’s eyes flew open and her heart started to hammer. He’d never told her that he loved her before. “I love you too,” she somehow managed to stammer out. Eric turned both of them until they were lying on their sides. He was still inside of her, although his penis had long grown soft.

“I know that we haven’t known each other that long, but after everything that we’ve been through together, it seems like much longer,” he said. 

“I know. I feel the same,” Tris agreed quickly. “When Four rescued me from Jeanine, the only thing that I could think about was trying to find you. And then you made that message over the radios, and I was so happy. And when I saw you…” 

Eric reached up and brushed away the tears that Tris hadn’t known she’d shed. “It’s okay, I’m here now,” he whispered before he leaned over and kissed her. “And, whatever might happen, I’m never going to leave you ever again.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you spot any grammatical errors or typos, please let me know so that I might fix them!

Sometimes, fate was funny. The next morning, Tris bid goodbye to Eric as he left to go back to his own apartment for a change of clothes. Then, Tris walked over to the town center to find out what her work assignment for the day was. 

It was super annoying that Evelyn seemed to think that everybody should know how to do literally every job in the faction. Some people were better than others at certain things, and that was okay. That was what drove the city and what drove people to do better. Tris had hopes that, once things settled into a routine, Evelyn would start to assign people to do jobs that they were good at. 

But for now, everybody was on work rotation. Tris walked up to the giant sign that had been erected in the exact center of the city that posted everybody’s job for the day. She trailed her finger down the appropriate sheet until she found her name. 

Prior, Beatrice— Rubble and Garbage Sorting Facility

Tris’s heart started to hammer in her chest when she saw where she would be that day. Her parents had literally just told her about it last night. This would be the start of her investigation into what had become of the file. There was a pretty good chance that the box had ended up at the sorting facility, so it was obviously the first place to start looking for it. 

Tris then got onto the train— it was still overly strange to her to not see Dauntless jumping on and off at the lower points on the track— and took it out to the fields. 

When she got off at the station indented for the farmers, Tris looked out into the distance and saw the building that her father had mentioned. She’d been aware of it in the past, but had never paid much attention to it before. Abnegation children were taught to not be overly curious.

“All for the sorting facility!” a man called out just beside the field. Tris walked over to him. “Heading to the facility?”

“Yes,” Tris agreed. 

“Then hop on in,” the man said. “We taxi people back and forth all day.” Tris got into the van, and took a seat next to a girl who looked maybe a few years older than Tris was. There was also an older man, maybe around Tris’s father’s age, sitting in the back row. 

“Hi, I’m Sarah,” the girl introduced herself.

“Tris.”

“You look awfully familiar, where you in Candor?”

“No,” Tris said with a slight shake of her head. “Born Abnegation, transfered to Dauntless.”

“Abnegation, that’s it,” Sarah said with a shy smile. “I probably saw you around in the community center.”

“We’re about the same age, so we also likely saw one another at school, too,” Tris said.

“Yes, this is also true,” Sarah agreed. One more person got into the van, and then the driver got in, too. They started off towards the sorting facility. 

They were quiet as they drove out to the facility. When they went into the building, the workers there instantly swept the four new arrivals up to start sorting through piles of garbage. 

 

* * *

They were all allowed a half-hour break outside for lunch. As Tris sat and ate the sandwich provided, Sarah walked over to her. “I remembered where I’ve seen you before,” she said as she sat down on the bench next to Tris. “You were on the feeds as being part of the divergent resistance against first Jeanine, and now the Factionless.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tris said carefully. Sarah leaned in close to Tris.

“Believe it or not, but most of us don’t like the Factionless. We appreciate them coming in and saving us from Erudite’s short tyrannical rule, but not the fact that they’ve turned into tyrants themselves,” she whispered. “Now laugh like I’ve just told you the funniest joke ever.” Tris did as she’d been told to do, but the laugh sounded overly wooden and phony to her ears. “The question remains: what exactly are you guys going to do about this?”

“We’re just trying to regroup after everything that’s happened,” Tris said quietly. “To number the dead.”

“We’re all trying to do that,” Sarah said rather sadly. Tris felt rather guilty. She’d been exceptionally lucky that, not only had her family survived the attack, but she and Eric had as well. Maybe Sarah hadn’t been quiet as lucky. 

“I’ll try to talk to the others,” Tris said after a stretch of silence. “We don’t want any of this, either.”

“Good, I’m glad,” Sarah said as she offered Tris a small smile. 

“There’s… something else that we could use everybody’s help with, though,” Tris went on.

“Anything, we’ll do anything.”

“There’s a missing USB drive,” Tris said urgently, her voice low. “It was brought into the city about twenty years ago, kept inside of a small, metal box. It was initially hidden inside a bookstore in Erudite, but after the store closed, it was torn down and the box has been missing. It’s highly likely that it ended up here, but where it when from here is anybody’s guess.”

“What’s on the USB?” Sarah asked with a look of confusion on her face.

“We hope something that’ll stop the Factionless,” Tris said. Sarah’s eyes lit up with eager excitement.

“Alone, I’m not sure if I can do much to help find it, but there’s a bunch of us who’ve been talking in whispers,” Sarah said. “We’ll help you to find it so long as it helps to stop the Factionless.”

 

* * *

Tris couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation that she’d had with Sarah that afternoon. When the driver took the workers to the train station at the end of their shift, Tris hurried over to her parent’s new apartment.

“Honey, it’s good to see you,” Andrew said when he answered the door. “Can you stay for dinner? Your mom should be home in a few minutes.”

“I have something urgent that I have to talk to both of you about,” Tris said in a hushed whisper as she stepped into their home. 

She looked around— their new place was about as impersonal as hers was at the moment. Even though people in Abnegation did not approve of decorations or anything that wasn’t completely necessary to daily life, this was just empty and sad. Her childhood home bore the marks of lives lived— accidental scratches on the walls, scuff marks on the floors. Things laid out that they would need, the place-settings at the table that had seen millions of meals over the years. 

“Your mom should be home in a few minutes,” Andrew said, as he gestured for Tris to have a seat. She sat gingerly on the sofa and looked at her father. Really looked at him. It looked as if he’d aged several decades recently. Had he always had wrinkles in the corner of his eyes and around his mouth? Had his hair always been that grey? “How have you been since everything’s happened?”

“Okay,” Tris said quietly as she looked down at her fingers. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping ever since… everything… I keep seeing all of those dead people, especially the ones that I knew. In Dauntless, part of our training is to face our fears. Sometimes, the fears are presented as a metaphor, and sometimes, it’s a more literal representation of what we’re afraid of. Going into my fear landscape a few months ago seems like a cakewalk now in comparison to what I’ve been through since then.”

“Beatrice…” Andrew said sadly. “I wish that I could tell you when you could expect to feel better, and unafraid, but the truth is that there’s no timeline for getting over a severe emotional trauma like we’ve all had. And, truthfully, even though we all went through a rough time at the hands of Erudite because of Jeanine, I think that the worst is yet to come.”

“At the hands of the Factionless,” Tris said quietly as she twisted her fingers together.

“At the hands of the Factionless,” Andrew agreed with a slight nod of his head. 

They were silent for a moment, each at a loss for what to say. Then, they heard the key in the door and Natalie came into the room a moment later. “Beatrice…” she said a bit breathlessly when she spotted her daughter. Tris stood up and went to hug her mom. 

“Mom, it’s good to see you.”

“Yes, you too, honey,” Natalie said as she hugged her daughter tightly. Even though they’d just seen each other the night before, Tris felt like it had been much longer than that. Natalie put her things down, and she and Andrew went into the kitchen to start making dinner. It almost felt like old times to Tris… except that everything was completely different now. Caleb wasn’t there, and the kitchen was much smaller than at their old home. 

While they got dinner ready, Tris told them about meeting with Sarah at the sorting facility and the things that Sarah had said. “I was excited when I found out that that’s where I’d be today, but all of the people who were working there were around my age,” Tris finished. “I was going to ask them about the box, but they wouldn’t have been working there when it would have been brought in.” 

Natalie hummed with agreement. “It is interesting to think that the other people in the city might be our allies now,” she said after a moment. 

“Oh please, they were more than eager to accept divergent sanctuary when Erudite-controlled Dauntless roamed the streets, killing everybody,” Tris said as she rolled her eyes. “And who’s to say that they wouldn’t have been on our side to begin with if not for the threat of being seen as a ‘traitor’?”

“It is an interesting idea,” Andrew said slowly. “And we could sure use all of the help that we can get in finding that USB. Especially if what you say about the sorting facility is true.” He started to dish up the simple dinner of chicken and rice, and they all sat down to eat. 

“At any rate, I’ve already told Sarah about the USB and the box,” Tris went on after they’d all dug into the food. “I didn’t give her any specifics about what was on the USB, but told her that it might stop the Factionless.”

“I don’t suppose that you know where this young lady lives?” Natalie asked after a beat.

“No,” Tris said quietly.

“It’s alright,” Natalie said. “I think that I’m going to start spreading the word that we’re going to accept anybody into our meetings, not just the divergents.”

“But how will we determine who’s on our side verses a member of the Factionless?” Tris asked. 

“Much in the same way that you found out that Sarah was sympathetic to our case,” Andrew said. “We’ll wait for them to approach us and start asking about how they can help us to take down the Factionless.”

Tris nodded with agreement; it made sense to not go around and start running her mouth about taking down the Factionless. 

“But if what Sarah said is true, then we’ve probably just gained a lot more people to fight with us,” Tris said. Andrew and Natalie exchanged a look. 

“We’re going to need a bigger meeting hall,” Natalie said. 

 

* * *

Tris had just gotten into her apartment following dinner with her parents when somebody knocked on the door. She opened it and Eric instantly pulled her into a warm embrace. “I came by after my shift, and you weren’t here. I was worried about you,” he said.

“Sorry, I needed to tell my parents something and ended up having dinner with them, too,” Tris said. She pulled away from Eric and motioned him inside. Tris quickly told Eric about her conversation with Sarah and the resulting conversation with her parents. 

“While I’m rather reluctant to trust non-divergents because everybody just went along with the entire ‘divergents are monsters’ thing that Norton came up with, I’m excited at the prospect of having more allies now,” Eric said once she’d finished. 

“None of this is their fault,” Tris pointed out. “They didn’t ask to be dragged into a city-wide war lead by Jeanine, and they certainly did not ask to then have the entire Faction system stripped by the Factionless. They have every right to be angry right now. And, at least in the minds of people like Sarah, they probably think that the divergents are the lesser evil.”

“When you put it like that, it makes me think that we’re only going to set ourselves up to be double-crossed once we’ve finally gotten rid of the Factionless,” Eric said with a firm scowl. 

“What do you mean?” Tris asked sharply. 

“I mean that most of those people have spent their entire lives believing that the divergents are monsters, that they’re going to tear the factions apart. And in the end, what was the reason for Jeanine attacking everybody? The divergents. And what gave the factionless an excuse to come in and finish destroying the city in Jeanine’s wake? The divergents,” Eric said sourly. 

“The divergents are innocent in all of this, though!” Tris pointed out. “We were all just minding our own business, doing our best to not have any more people killed at Jeanine’s hands. And then she comes along and wipes out most of a faction because of her fear or lack of understanding or whatever! And then the opportunist Factionless swoop in while the city’s in complete chaos following Jeanine’s attack and they take over. And like what my mom said last night at the meeting: the divergent who were in the tunnels or who were being held prisoner in Erudite have a black mark. We’re made to be the villains yet again while the only thing that we’ve done is the same thing that we’ve been doing: just trying to survive!”

Eric’s eyes went wide before he narrowed them. “That’s not how they see it. And you can spin the words like that, but the only thing that they’re ever going to see will be the root cause of all of that: divergents,” he said. 

Tris contemplated him for a long moment. “Is this the only thing that we’re going to do now? Fight about shit?” she asked rather sadly. The stern look in Eric’s face softened at once.

“No, of course not,” he said. “When this is all over, I hope to take you and put this thrice-damned city into our rear-view mirror.”

“What do you mean?” Tris asked quickly. 

“I mean…” Eric reached for her and pulled her onto his lap. “I don’t want to stay in a place where we’re viewed as monsters and people go out of their way to kill us, no matter how many innocent lives that they kill in the process. I just want to live in peace, even if that means that we’re living off of the land and there’s nobody around for miles.” He gently cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly. 

“Mmm, I’d like that a lot,” Tris whispered against his lips. She tucked her head under his chin. “I just wish that you weren’t so angry at everybody all of the time.”

“I’m angry at them because they told me that I was a monster and then I became one,” Eric said sourly. 

“You aren’t a monster,” Tris pointed out gently. 

“I killed people, people who were my friends. My fellow Faction members. Before they captured me, I tried to escape. I had to kill them,” Eric said, his voice low.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Tris said. She pulled away from Eric just enough to look him in the eye. “Do you honestly think for two seconds that most of our Dauntless friends would have killed you if they knew that you were a divergent?”

“…Probably not, no…” Eric said with some hesitation. 

“This is not your fault, Eric. This is all Jeanine’s fault for putting those microchips into the Dauntless. Jeanine’s fault for turning all of our former faction into mindless, killing machines. How exactly do you think hat the Dauntless who were under her control felt?”

Eric didn’t need to answer the question, because they both knew the answer all too well. Eric held Tris tightly, and she returned the gesture. They all had their demons to overcome after everything that had happened. 

 

* * *

The next day, Tris was assigned to work in the soup kitchens. It was one of the few places where she instantly knew what to do, thanks to years of working there when she was in Abnegation. Tris was more than happy to slip into the familiar role of handing out food with a smile, even if her smile felt wooden. 

“Tris?” somebody said after she’d been working for about an hour passing out food. She turned around and her fake smile was replaced by a genuine one. 

“Christina!” Tris said. She stepped away from her spot at the counter— nobody was in line now anyway— to hug her friend. “I was so worried about you!”

“Me? What about you? You were caught up in the shitstorm of Jeanine’s making and now you’re under the microscope by the Factionless,” Christina said with a scowl. Damn, did everybody know about this but the divergents? Or maybe it was more of Tris’s desire to pretend like nothing at all was wrong in the world, if even for a second.

“I’m not the one who was turned into a puppet thanks to Jeanine,” Tris said quietly. 

“Yeah…” Christina said quietly. “The Factionless aren’t pressing charges against the Dauntless because of that, but they’re also not just going to let us off scot-free either. They say that we should have seen the writing on the wall that Erudite was planning something major, and was going to use Dauntless as their scapegoats.”

“That’s just fucking stupid,” Tris hissed. “The divergents had ears everywhere, but we still didn’t see Jeanine going out and killing everybody in Abnegation like that.”

“So it is true,” Christina said as her eyes went wide. “I mean, people were talking about you. Said that your entire family was part of the divergent movement… but…” She shook her head. “You’re my friend, Tris. I thought that I knew you.”

“And you do know me. My divergence has nothing to do with anything. Jeanine is the real monster, here.”

“Damn right she is,” Christina said as her grip tightened on a pan that she was holding. “While Evelyn is still publishing reports of how many dead Candors and Abnegation, she’s failed to report on how many dead Dauntless that there are.”

The bloody images of Drew and Nikki flashed through Tris’s mind. “There were too many dead, that’s for damned sure,” Tris said. “Listen, Christina, can I trust you?”

“Yes, of course,” Christina said without hesitation. “I don’t give a damn if you’re divergent or not. You’re still my friend, after all. They can publish all of the crap that they want, but I know the truth about you.”

“Thank you,” Tris said, and genuinely felt very relieved over this. “Actually, there’s a lot that I have to tell you. Do you want to come by my apartment after our shifts are over here?”

“Yes, where did they put you?” 

“In Candor, next to the bank,” Tris said. 

“Oh, I know where that is,” Christina said with a bright smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Tris remembered that Christina had been born in Candor before she transfered to Dauntless. “We have so much to catch up on.” Her smile fell, and Tris wondered just exactly how aware that everybody had been while they’d been under Jeanine’s mind-control program. 

 

* * *

Tris and Christina walked to Tris’s apartment after their shift was over at the soup kitchen. They didn’t talk at all until they got into Tris’s apartment. Then, Tris started to tell Christina everything about the divergents, from finding out that she was one, to her mother’s surprise visit to Dauntless, to the suicides in Dauntless that were a precursor to the attacks. 

When Tris was halfway through telling Christina about her undercover mission into Erudite to deliver the message to her brother, the door opened and Eric came in. “Hey,” he said carefully when he saw Christina. 

“Hi,” Tris said and rose to greet him. “I’m telling Christina everything.”

“Are you sure that that’s wise?” Eric asked carefully as he looked over Tris’s shoulder to Christina, who was absently picking at the arm of the sofa. 

“I know that you’re having problems trusting non-divergents, but Christina is my friend. And I’m tired of keeping secrets from my friends,” Tris said with some exhaustion. “I’m not going to ask you to stay if you don’t want to, but Christina is my friend, and I think that she understands what it is that we’ve gone through.”

Eric looked into Tris’s eyes for a moment before he kissed her forehead. “If you trust her, then I trust her, too,” he said as he moved past her and went into the kitchen. “Anybody hungry?”

“I could eat,” Christina said without hesitation. 

“I’ll cook some dinner,” Eric said as he started to get some things out from the fridge and cabinets. 

While he cooked, Tris continued on with explaining everything. Every so often, Eric would chime in with something that Tris had misremembered or his opinion on something that had happened. 

Tris finished by telling Christina about meeting Sarah and her parent’s decision to include as many people as possible to help take down the Factionless. By then, they were just finishing up their meal. 

“As I’m sure that you already know, but the Factionless aren’t exactly being overly friendly towards both the divergents and the Dauntless who were used in the attack,” Christina said once Tris had finished. “A lot of people are really angry at the Factionless, saying that they’re just making things a hell of a lot worse. But Evelyn is throwing people who speak out against her publicly into jail. Yesterday, I was learning how to run the trains, and we were driving past the center of town. There was a big riot that Evelyn’s Factionless guards were breaking up. They were chanting about how Evelyn is every bit of a tyrant that Jeanine was, that Evelyn is just making things a lot worse… I saw the guards loading them into the police vans. After my shift was over, I just casually went by Evelyn’s self-appointed headquarters in what used to be the Abnegation town hall. The place was overflowing with prisoners! It’s got to be against some laws or something to keep that many people locked up in rooms that small.”

“Evelyn’s writing her own rules now,” Eric said with a sneer. “And without any sort of opposition, she’s just going to keep on doing this. We need to get a solid lead on that USB.”

“I don’t know where all of our friends from Dauntless ended up,” Christina said slowly. “All I know is that Will is dead.”

“What?” Tris asked sharply. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” 

Fat tears started to roll down Christina’s face. “Because it hurts too much to think about. And I don’t know where Marlene and Uriah and Lynn are, and I keep hoping that I’m going to somehow run into them while on a work assignment, you know, like how I just ran into you today,” Christina said as she gestured to Tris. “And I keep thinking that I’m going to find him again soon, too. But… When the program was turned off, and we all woke up, I was standing at the edge of the Candor section of town, right around where I grew up. And there were all of these bodies around me… Candor, but some Dauntless, too. The Candor people had guns, but there were more of us than them, and we just…” 

Christina broke off with a choked sob, and put her hand over her brow to hide her face. “Every time I close my eyes, the only thing that I can see is Will, of all of those bodies. And I can’t help but wonder: exactly how many of those people was I personally responsible for killing?”

“I know what you’re going through,” Eric said gently as he lay a hand on her shoulder. “I was trying to get back to the tunnels when I was ambushed. I killed some of them in an attempt to escape. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about them. They were my friends. At least you had an excuse… I was just trying to survive and not be captured.”

Christina collapsed against the table, her shoulders shaking violently with her silently sobs. Eric and Tris exchanged a worried look, and after a moment, Tris hesitantly put a friendly hand on Christina’s shoulder. 

“Maybe the factionless are right,” Christina said after a moment, her voice muffled by her arms. “We should have seen the writing on the wall; should have seen how Jeanine was inching towards an all-out attack.”

“No, Evelyn is wrong,” Eric barked at her. “Jeanine is a monster, but Evelyn is even worse. She’s turning us against one another, telling the victims of this attack that it was all their fault, telling those who were tortured at Jeanine’s hand that it’s all our fault that we were captured, that the Dauntless should have seen it coming when even the divergents had to read between the lines.”

“Evelyn is a monster,” Christina repeated as she sat up and brushed the tears from her face away. 

“Yes, that’s right,” Tris said quickly. “And right now, we’re a little bit scattered. Partly because of Jeanine, but also because Evelyn stepped in and turned Jeanine’s chaos into even more chaos. But we’re going to track down that USB, and take down Evelyn.”

“Right,” Christina said. “Actually, I think that I might have an idea of how we can track down what might have happened to the USB.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, please take a few seconds to let me know in a review or by leaving kudos. It takes a few seconds of your time, but every single review and kudo that I get always makes my day a little bit brighter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might notice that this chapter is twice as long as any of the other chapters... This is because this isn't one chapter, but rather, two for the price of one!
> 
> ...Okay okay, so the second "chapter" is just a bonus scene between Caleb and Susan. It wouldn't leave me alone. Feel free to not read it if you don't want to. It's not going to effect the main plot in any way.
> 
> There'll be a brief pause before the bonus chapter starts, so you'll know when it does.

Tris slunk through the dark streets. It was starting to turn into something that she was getting very used to doing. Her night vision was improving, and she knew the best, darkest streets to go down to avoid being spotted by the cameras that continued to watch over the city.

She got to the address that she'd been given and knocked twice, once, three times, once, on the door. It opened a crack, and a dour-face man appeared from the inkiness of the interior. "Password?"

"Factionless will fall," Tris whispered quickly. The door opened further and the man ushered Tris in quickly before he shut the door. They were both plunged into complete darkness before the man lit an old oil lantern and pointed Tris down the hall. She went in the way that she'd been pointed, and greeted the two others in the room curtly.

"Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice, Ms. Prior," said the older of the two women who were in the room.

"It's I who should be thanking you," Tris said as she sat down in a worn arm chair across from the two women. "When Christina said that she might have found some former workers for the processing plant…" She trailed off and shook her head slightly.

"Can you tell us of the specifics of what you're looking for?" the younger woman asked. "Christina said that it was a USB drive inside of a metal box, but… there are a lot of USB drives and a lot of metal boxes."

Tris was getting very good at describing both the box and the USB that her mother had carried into the city all those years ago.

"As I'm sure you can imagine, it's important that we don't have any sort of physical record of these items, let alone to let on that we're looking for them," Tris said once she'd finished describing the items.

"Christina briefly touched on the importance of finding them, but we got the gist," the first woman said, and they both nodded with agreement. "We're slowly all getting the word around. However, it's more important that we move slowly so as to avoid suspicion."

"Before everything went to hell, the divergent had to do that, too," Tris said with a thoughtful frown. "But since everything happened, the divergent had been put on a microscope slide, and the great eye is keeping a very close eye on every move that we make. We used to work as a unit before, but now, we must act individually. I got dinged the other night just for going to have dinner with my parents."

"That should have been your first hint that something was wrong," the second woman said.

"What do you mean?" Tris asked quickly.

"The divergents were the ones who saw the writing on the wall," the older woman started. "I know that you had a personal stake in the issue, but the rest of us shouldn't have been so blinded by the truth. As Evelyn said. But we were. Which was why, not only did we allow the attack to happen, but also why the number of dead was so high. The divergents were the only ones who were ready with weapons and hiding places, but the people that Evelyn is punishing is you."

Tris gave them an annoyed "see what I mean?" gesture before she stood up. The other two women stood as well. "Thank you for meeting with me tonight. I hope that we can locate the USB quickly, or else we'll continue to be stranded up shit creek without a paddle." She shook both of their hands before she left the house.

Half an hour later, she let herself into Eric's apartment. He was reading by candle light over by the window, but put the book aside when Tris came in.

"How did it go?" he asked as he rose.

"About as you would expect," Tris said blankly as she walked over to him. He quickly wrapped her in his arms, and they held each other for a long moment in silence. "I didn't like the thought of being thrust into the middle of a shitty, ill-informed war, but I like doing nothing even less."

"We did all that we could for everybody, and still, they ignored us and treated us like we were the monsters. But when Jeanine actually did attack everybody, suddenly we're in the wrong again?" Eric said a bit sourly. "And anyway, with Evelyn keeping a very close eye on us, there's not much that we can do. By helping to spread the word around about the USB your mom brought in, we're doing all that we can."

Tris lowered her eyes, because of course, he was right. Their hands were metaphorically tied at the moment, and just going around to secret, midnight meetings was putting them all at risk. They'd done all that they could at the moment; they only just had to sit back and hope that the USB turned up.

* * *

"Now that things are finally settling down a bit, we've gotten accounts of who's died, and where everybody else ended up," Andrew explained to everybody at a meeting two days later.

The meeting was in a basement of an old bookstore in Erudite. They kept having to move their meeting locations around, not only to help avoid suspicion, but also because there were now more divergent here than there had been at the previous meeting.

"As I'm sure that all of you know, the most losses occurred in Abnegation," Andrew went on. "It took a lot of time to compile this, and it's made even worse because Evelyn won't release an official statement about those who died. However, after a lot of questions, we've finally been able to put the puzzle pieces together. I'll pass the lists around so that everybody can find their loved ones." He passed the list to the man who sat on his left; Natalie was seated to Andrew's right.

Tris wanted to find out where Holly and Susan had ended up, as she had seen neither of them since the Factionless took over. She also wanted to find out what had happened to April— neither she nor anybody that she spoke with knew what had become of her.

"While that's being passed around, our only other business is tracking down the USB," Natalie said. "Tris, you have the floor right now."

Tris stood up and explained the conversation that she'd had with Sarah, the resulting conversation with her parents, the conversation with Christina, and finally, the conversation that she'd had with some of Christina's non-divergent friends.

"I don't like the thought that the people who vilified us are now in charge of helping us," Megan said from the other side of the room.

"We're all after the same end goal," Tris said. "And I think that they're starting to think of us in a different light after we sort of saved their asses." She rolled her eyes.

Jessica mumbled something under her breath— it sounded rude to Tris. "Excuse me, you're going to have to share with the rest of the class," Chad said dryly to her.

"I said, there's no reason why we should be forced to live in a city, in a social experiment, especially when we're being hunted down like animals," Jessica said with a sneer.

"Yeah, why don't we just leave? Let the non-divergents sort this mess out," Kat said. "After all, they're the ones who created it in the first place." Jessica snorted with agreement.

"Guys, let me tell you that things inside the city is a complete cakewalk in comparison to how it is where I grew up," Natalie said with a frown. "Which is why, even though I knew that every single move that anybody made in the city would be watched by somebody, possibly by millions of people, I wanted to come in and try to stop Michael Norton's slaying of the divergents. Because it sure as hell beats living in the streets, never knowing when your next meal might be, or if it'll be from this trash can or that one."

Tris stared at her mother. She'd spoken— albeit, very briefly— about what it was like outside the city, but she'd never mentioned the conditions in which she grew up. Tris had just sort of assumed that everything outside of the city was like the city, too. And that her mom's only reason for wanting to come into the city was because she wanted to stop Norton from killing divergents.

Never once had she ever imagined that things outside the city were even worse. Even worse than things were now. And that was the truly horrifying thought.

Apparently, everybody else was having the same thoughts as Tris about the matter, because the room was filled with a disturbed silence.

"This is why it's important that we find the USB, we put Evelyn and the rest of the Factionless back in their places, and restore the city to their rightful order," Natalie went on after a long time.

"I just wish that there was more that we could do to help," Megan said. Even though her voice was quiet, it was overly loud in the silence of the room.

"Right now, with our hands tied as they are, the best thing that we can do is to not do anything at all," Andrew said.

"Continue to keep your ears to the ground in case any news surfaces, but allow the non-divergents on our side to help us," Natalie said. "Other than that, this will likely be our last formal gathering. We just wanted to let everybody know what was happening."

Several out-raged cries rose up following her statement.

"What?"

"How can you do this to us, Natalie?"

"You're all that I have left!"

"Everybody, everybody, please!" Natalie tried to get everybody to calm down.

"SILENCE!" Eric barked. "BE QUIET, OR WE'LL ATTRACT ATTENTION!" That shut everybody up very fast.

"I'm not saying that you're somehow forbidden to meet with your friends, but we won't gather like this anymore," Natalie explained. "That's all." She seemed almost sad, somehow.

People got up and started to leave in groups of two or three. Eric turned to Tris, clearly more than ready to get out quickly. Who knows what kind of unwanted attention that the outburst earlier might have attracted.

"Hang on one second, I want to find out where Holly, Susan, and April are," Tris said.

"I can tell you where April and Holly are," Eric said.

"Why didn't you say anything before?" Tris hissed at him and shot him an annoyed look.

"You never said that you wanted to see them!" Eric protested and gave an irritated gesture. Tris rolled her eyes and went over to where the list was at the moment. The person who was reading it handed it over with a sad look on their face— they must have found out that whoever they were looking for had been killed— and then quickly left.

The list was in alphabetical order, so Susan's name was pretty easy for Tris to find. Since Susan was lower than her parents and her brother, Tris saw with a sinking heart that all of Susan's family was dead. Tris memorized Susan's new address, and then went back over to Eric.

"Is everything okay?" he asked as he wrapped his arm around her waist.

"Her family is dead," Tris whispered as she moved against him and pressed her face into his chest. "And I know that so many Abnegation are dead, but… I knew the Black family. I grew up across the street from them. I played with Robert when I was little, and now he's dead."

"Let's go home," Eric whispered against the top of her head. "You can visit Susan tomorrow. Maybe bring her some food or something." Tris nodded slightly, and pulled away from him. She wiped her eyes, and walked towards the door.

* * *

Tris was more than a little surprised when she knocked on Susan's apartment door the next morning and Caleb answered it.

"Caleb! What are you doing here?" Tris exclaimed.

"I've been keeping Susan company ever since everything happened," Caleb replied quickly. "She's been a complete mess, and quite frankly, I don't blame her. She watched everybody that she loves be killed by the Dauntless. I think that the real question is why you're here."

"I came to visit my friend," Tris said without hesitation.

"It's okay, Caleb," Susan said as she came to the door. "I want to see Beatrice."

"Alright," Caleb said as he stepped aside to let Tris in, but didn't close the door. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No, it's okay," Susan said quickly. "Come in, Beatrice, please. Have a seat? Can I get you something to eat or drink?"

"No, thank you, but I did bring you some cookies," Tris said as she held out the covered plate that she'd carried over. Susan took the plate and peeled back the foil that covered them.

"Oatmeal raisin," Susan said as tears started to form in her eyes. "You remembered my favorite." She set the plate down on the coffee table and swept Tris up into a tight hug.

"Of course I remembered, we're friends," Tris said gently as she hugged her friend back.

"I'm sorry; I'm such a mess right now," Susan said as she pulled away from Tris and rubbed at her eyes. "I've been put off work duty after I had a mental break-down in the community center the day after the attack. I can't sleep at all, and I normally throw up anything that I manage to actually get down in the first place."

"I think that it's understandable; you witnessed something very horrible," Tris said quickly. "I've been having nightmares myself."

"Caleb has been a real big help to me," Susan said as she moved slightly away from Tris and reached for Caleb. He came at once to her side, and she took his hand between her own. "He stays with me at night to help me through the nightmares, and he takes care of me when I… get sick. I don't think that I could have survived much without him." Caleb wrapped his free arm around Susan's waist, and she offered him a sad but sweet smile.

Tris remembered, before Caleb picked Erudite the year before, the relationship between the two of them. She remembered how Natalie and Mary Black would talk about how good that they were together, and were starting to discuss wedding plans. She remembered how Caleb and Susan would share tender smiles across the room, exchange gentle touches when they thought that nobody was looking. She'd thought that they would have ended up together… if Caleb hadn't picked Erudite.

Now, it looked as though they had a second chance. Even if circumstances were anything but ideal for a budding romance.

"I'm glad," Tris said with a small smile of her own as she looked between the two of them. "I… I just wanted to come by and visit with you, but I feel like I'm butting in on something."

"Oh, please don't feel like you're intruding, Beatrice," Susan said quickly. She moved away from Caleb and walked over to Tris. "Please stay a little. Talk with me. Like what we used to do when we were in school. It might help to distract me for a while."

"Okay," Tris said slowly. Susan gestured for Tris to take a seat, so Tris moved to sit on the sofa. Susan sat next to her.

"Caleb tells me that you have a boyfriend now," Susan started. "Somebody from Dauntless. Tell me about him."

"Um… I'm not really sure where to start…"

"Okay, how did you two meet?"

"He's one of the initiation instructors for Dauntless," Tris explained. "I was really intimidated by him at first."

"What changed your mind about him?"

"Part of the initiation process for Dauntless is learning how to physically fight," Tris started. "We're each matched up with another transfer initiate, and my first fight was against this tank of a girl named Molly. She proceeded to beat the everliving shit out of me. Ooh, sorry."

"No, no, it's okay," Susan said. "I know that you're not an Abnegation anymore. Well… I guess that I'm not either, but I try not to think about that. Okay, so this girl beat you up. Then what?"

"I blacked out and woke up in the Dauntless hospital. The nurse wanted to keep me overnight for observation. In the middle of the night, Eric came to me, and offered to train me. I accepted, because I didn't want to return to Abnegation with my tail between my legs. The Dauntless initiation has three parts: a physical training part, then we move on to working with a fear serum, before we move on to a second tier of fear serums, called the fear landscape. I did okay in the first part, but, thanks to my divergence, I soared to the number one ranking for the second stage."

"Okay, I'm really interested to hear about you and Eric, but I also want to know about how you discovered that you're a divergent!" Susan said. She looked almost normal for a moment. Tris was only too happy to tell her.

* * *

Tris didn't leave Susan's place until it was nearing curfew. Susan had insisted that Tris stay for dinner, even though Susan herself really only picked at her food a little. Tris left after promising no less than a dozen times that she'd be back to visit soon. And she really meant it— throughout the day, Tris had seen Susan perk up a lot, and Caleb seemed to notice it, too.

Tris hadn't meant to spend so long with Susan, and had intended to visit with April before curfew. But even if there wasn't a strictly enforced curfew, April liked to go to bed early anyway. So Tris just went back to her apartment.

"Hey, I was worried about you," Eric said when Tris got in.

"Sorry, I stayed a lot longer over with Susan than I'd intended," Tris said.

"I kept some dinner for you, if you're hungry," Eric said.

"Thanks, but I ate with Susan and Caleb," Tris said as she sunk onto the sofa. Just then, the lights went out with the mandatory lights-out time to help preserve the city's power supply. She had both candles and flash lights set out in various places in the apartment for this time, but Tris didn't feel like moving to get either of them at the moment. "She's in a super bad way, Eric. She's hardly eating or sleeping. Caleb is helping her, but, it's not enough."

"She's suffering from severe PTSD."

"What's that?"

"Post-traumatic stress disorder. I've read about it books, but I never really thought that I'd see any real examples of it. Not… until now. I've been reading up on it recently. I feel like most of the citizens of our fine city are looking at varying measures of it." He opened up the curtains so that some natural light from outside filtered into the room. It wasn't enough to fully light the room, but enough so that they were no longer in pitch black. "Even though all of the books that I've read say that you can't diagnose PTSD this soon, I doubt that any psychologist would pass up the opportunity after the ordeal that we went through."

"But there aren't any psychologists in the city," Tris said.

"And that's why I've been reading up on the subject," Eric said as he moved back to the sofa and sat down next to Tris. "So that maybe I could start to help others move past some of this. We're both suffering from nightmares, but there are more people in the city like Susan. Those who can't work, who can't sleep, who are wasting away."

"I… I want to help, too!" Tris whispered as she grabbed Eric's hands tightly.

"I can give you some books on the topic," Eric said. "I've barely started to research the topic, myself. But, whenever I think that I'm finally starting to grasp something, there's like ten other chapters on the topic and I've only just uncovered the tip of the iceberg."

They were silent for a stretch. "I miss your device that turned off all of the electronics and the solar generator," Tris said. "I hate knowing that they're listening in on… well…"

"They watch everywhere else, so why should our conversations in your apartment be somehow sacred to them?" Eric said.

"That's not what I'm saying at all," Tris said. She moved to straddle his lap, and wrapped her arms around him. "Some things should be completely, one-hundred percent private, and it's irritating to me that they're watching."

"Oh, right," Eric said. He leaned in and kissed her tenderly. "We could build a fort using the kitchen chairs and some sheets. At best, they'd have some muffled audio, but no video."

"What are you, five years old?" Tris teased him.

"Probably," Eric said with a roll of his eyes. He offered her a cocky smile. "Besides, I don't like the thought of anybody seeing your body except for me."

"I don't like that thought, either, but I do feel a little bit better with the thought that, even if somebody does have to watch the footage before it gets shown to the public, at least certain things probably won't make it onto the air," Tris said. "Especially when we talk about how we're fucking real people, our lives were fucking ruined by Jeanine, and none of this is in any way scripted. This isn't entertainment for us." Her voice rose with every word until she was screaming loudly.

"Shhh, your neighbors will complain," Eric said and then silenced her with a kiss.

"Then maybe." Kiss. "I'd better." Kiss. "Put my mouth to." Kiss. "Better." Kiss. "Uses?"

With one final kiss, Tris pulled away from Eric and slid off his lap and onto the floor. She gently caressed his erection through his pants before she undid the belt and pants enough so that she could pull him out from his underwear. She stroked him for a moment before she leaned up and wrapped her lips around his cock.

Eric let out a low groan and brushed his hands through Tris's hair. He pulled the elastic out from her hair and tossed it aside before he continued to gently stroke her scalp. Tris alternated between licking around the head of his dick and taking him into her mouth as far as her gag reflex would allow.

He breathed out her name in a way that was half whisper, half moan. Then he said it again, and then a third time, louder. "I'm going to cum," he finally said.

"I want to taste you," Tris said. She slowly ran her tongue up the length of his cock and looked up into Eric's eyes. His hand tightened on her scalp and he came with a low grunt. Tris slowly lapped up the mess that he'd made of himself until all of the cum was gone. Once she'd cleaned him up, she stood up slowly.

Eric grasped her waist, and she bent down for a kiss. "Do you like the way that I taste?" he whispered against her lips.

"If only I could live off of you," Tris said. Then she pulled away and laughed. "Okay, that was weird and a little creepy."

"Yeah, glad I'm not the only one who thought so," Eric said. He stood and picked Tris up. Then, he carried her into the bedroom and set her down on the bed. He leaned over to kiss her again before he pulled her shirt off. He moved away from her so that he could undress, and Tris finished undressing herself.

Once she'd pulled off the rest of her clothes, Tris moved back until she was lying with her head on her pillow. Eric came back over to the bed and knelt on the side of it. He leaned over to kiss her before he moved down her body. Where ever his fingers touched, his mouth was sure to follow.

After about a minute, his fingers reached the thick curls between her legs, and ran through the hair there. His fingers lightly ran down the length of her pussy, and Tris let out a low moan. Eric moved her legs further apart and bent over her. He slowly started to lap at her clit with his tongue. Then, he pushed two of his fingers into her vagina, and started to move them in time with the movement of his tongue against her clit.

Tris, already on edge from the thought of what Eric would do to her, twisted and moaned under him. Her fingers tightened onto the sheets, and her hips bucked up with every jolt of pleasure that he sent coursing through her.

"Eric!" she screamed out as her orgasm grew closer and closer.

"Yes, yes, scream my name," Eric whispered as he pulled away from her for a second, but didn't stop fingering her.

Tris's hold on the sheets tightened until her fingers hurt. She let out an indistinguishable scream of sheer pleasure, and her body twitched uncontrollably. Eric did not let up on her clit until her screaming had dropped to a hoarse, throaty moan; they both lost count of how many orgasms he brought her to.

She opened up her eyes and offered him an exhausted smile. Then, she reached up and brushed her thumb along his lips, trailing it over her juices that were smeared on there. Eric lightly bit down on the pad of her thumb, before he moved to lie down next to her. He pulled Tris into his arms, and she curled up against him.

"I'm sleepy now," she whispered against his chest. Her eyes fluttered closed, and Eric stared to rub her back.

"Get some sleep, then," he replied after a long pause. Her breathing had already evened out.

* * *

Thank you for reading, as always!

This is the pause that I mentioned at the start of the chapter. Like I said, this section is not important to the plot, and is mostly just some Susan/Caleb... stuff.

* * *

Susan jerked awake roughly, her breathing coming out in short pants. She pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing out loud, least she wake Caleb. She felt so guilty in denying him sleep, which was even harder to come by after everything that had happened. He said that he didn't mind staying with her if it would help her feel safer— and it did— but who was she to say that he deserved to be sleepless because of her.

But he must have sensed her movements, because not a moment later, he stirred awake. "Susan?" he whispered, his voice thick with sleep. She moved closer to him, taking some measure of comfort in his warmth. Almost automatically, he wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her face into his shoulder, and soon, it was damp from her tears.

Neither of them said anything. What was there to say that hadn't been spoken a thousand times before now? Finally, Susan was able to stop crying, and her shaking had become very minimal.

"Do you want a glass of water?" Caleb asked after a moment.

"Caleb, will you kiss me?" Susan whispered, her voice rough from crying. Caleb moved closer and pressed a lingering kiss onto Susan's forehead. "N-no, I meant, will you kiss me like how Eric kisses Tris?"

"Susan, I don't think that that's a good idea," Caleb said slowly.

"What? So it's okay for you to take care of me, but to love me is too much?"

"No, I didn't say that," Caleb said quickly. "You're really upset right now and-" Susan cut him off by pressing her lips to his. It was a gentle, chaste, Abnegation kiss. She pulled away just as quickly as she'd kissed him.

"I thought that you liked me, Caleb," Susan whispered, a little hurt.

"Susan, if I didn't like you, do you honestly think that I would have come to try to find you during the attack, let alone stay with you during all this time?" Caleb said.

"Then please just kiss me," Susan said.

"I've seen the way that Eric kisses Tris before," Caleb said slowly. "They kiss in a way that would make Abnegation members ashamed."

"They love each other a lot, I could tell from what she told me about him today," she said. "I know that it's very selfish of me, but I want to be loved like that, too."

"I think that a lot of people would argue that wanting to be loved is a basic human right," Caleb said. "In Erudite, everything is the opposite of how we're taught in Abnegation. They teach you not to repress your emotions, because doing so only leads to a stronger emotional break-down later. It impacts your work. But they also teach us that there's a time and place to express your opinions and to let out your emotions."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, if it's dinner time, you eat. If it's night, you sleep. But, if you're thirsty, you should get a drink. If you're horny, then you masturbate or find your partner."

They were silent for a moment. "What does horny mean?" Susan asked innocently.

"Sometimes, I forget how sheltered that Abnegation members can be," Caleb said. "I had a real awakening when I joined Erudite."

"Why did you leave? Leave me?" Susan whispered after a long moment of silence.

"Honestly, deciding to leave Abnegation was one of the most selfish decisions that I've ever made," he whispered. He brought his hand up and cupped her face. His thumb traced down the tear tracks on her cheeks. "A lot of my decision has to do with divergents and my mom."

"Your… your mom? What about her?"

"Before the test, she sat me down and she told me that she was a divergent, and so was dad. She said that there would be a good chance that I was, too, and told me how I could squash my divergence in the simulation so that nobody would know. I said nothing to her, and went off to the test that day. I thought about what she'd told me, but in the end, I chose to ignore her words. I got back a result of Erudite, and only Erudite. I… I was afraid, I believed all of those rumors that were going around about divergence… and I didn't want to associate myself with my family if they were all divergents. So I picked Erudite, not only because that was the faction that I'd tested for, but because I knew that Jeanine would do something about the problem."

"What changed your mind?"

"After I told Jeanine, she went and killed a bunch of divergents. She'd given me her word that no harm would come to them, but she went and killed them anyway," Caleb said slowly. "I felt so awful, I felt like killing myself. Later, I went to my parents and I told them what I'd done. I was considering coming back to Abnegation, but my mom told me that I'd gained Jeanine's trust— that it would be useful to have somebody inside Erudite, at Jeanine's side."

"I still don't understand how you could have been so damned selfish, Caleb," Susan whispered, her voice cracking because she was on the verge of tears again. "After the choosing ceremony, when you picked Erudite over Abnegation… over me, I went home and I cried for hours. I'd been planning our courtship, our wedding, our life together for years in my mind. But within one moment, my entire life came crashing down around me."

This time, Caleb's thumb met wetness as he caressed her cheek.

"I know that there aren't enough words to express how sorry that I am," Caleb whispered softly. "And I know that I can never make up for what I've done, for the loss of those lives that I caused. My mother has forgiven me, but not my father, nor Beatrice. I don't think that Beatrice ever will. I keep you at arms length now because I'm afraid that once you know who I really am, what I've done, you'll hate me as much as they do. I called them a monster, but the real monster is me."

This time, it was Susan who rubbed the tears from Caleb's face. "We're both horrible, broken people," she whispered. "I know that this won't change how the rest of the world sees us, but let's pretend like none of that ever happened, okay? From before your mom warned you about the divergents and the aptitude test, all of everything that happened since then never happened."

"I… don't think that I can just erase the past year and a half of Erudite training," Caleb said slowly.

"This is a new world, Caleb," Susan whispered. "We can be who ever we want to here. I know that there's a lot of talk of overthrowing the Factionless and getting everything back into order, but, if the Factionless allow us to be together, then I don't care about anything else." She leaned in and kissed him again, and Caleb briefly kissed her back.

Caleb hadn't bothered to go to any of the midnight divergent meetings, but he had heard the whispers going around the city about what they were planning. He wasn't sure who he was rooting for to win, but maybe Susan was right. Maybe it was beyond time to shuck off the old ways and embrace a world without factions.

"I don't believe that I ever answered your earlier question, about what horny meant," Caleb said after a long stretch of silence.

"Is it bad?"

"The Abnegation would have probably said so, but Erudite believed that it was just another aspect of being human. An aspect on the less desirable side of things, but something that needed to be dealt with before it became an issue," Caleb explained. "The word means to be sexually excited or lustful."

"A-and you've felt like this before?" Susan asked a bit uneasily.

"It's perfectly natural to feel sexually excited," Caleb said gently. "Especially for a teenage boy. When I was in Erudite, some of the boys from the years ahead of me took the transfers under their wings to show them a special section in the backs of the bookstores. You might have noticed the closed off area that said 'adults only' before. Well, it's filled with magazines that are full of lewd pictures of people."

"What? That's disgusting. Why would they make something like that? And who'd want to pose for pictures like that?"

"My Abnegation background made me wonder that as well. But, there was a reason why I tested for Erudite, and I was curious to find out more. People who are horny but don't have a partner look at those magazines, and it makes them horny. People masturbate to those images."

"Did you ever… do that?" Susan asked with some hesitation.

"Yes," Caleb said without hesitation. "Like I said, it's perfectly natural, and I wasn't seeing anybody. Sometimes… Sometimes I thought about you."

"What do you mean?"

"Like… Sometimes there would be a blonde girl in the magazines, and maybe if I tilted my head this way and sort of… squinted my eyes, it could pass for you? I thought about you a lot, not just in those moments, but like… when I'd come home from work, and my apartment was empty. It got even worse after your own choosing ceremony, because you picked Abnegation."

"Caleb, there wasn't much of a point in me even trying," Susan whispered. "You know that I only ever got through my classes because you helped me so much. I wouldn't have made it one day in Erudite."

"I could have helped you to pass all of your exams," Caleb whispered with growing excitement. "The exams are difficult, sure, but I can really picture you as a teacher. You were always so gentle and patient with the children at the community center."

"None of that matters, because I just completed the allotted community service hours, and I'm now a full Abnegation member," Susan said. "You became one exactly a year ago today. What are you going to do?"

"I'd show up at your… house, after the work day was over. I'd bring some bread that I'd made. Your…" Caleb trailed off, and then hugged Susan tighter.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Susan whispered into his chest.

"No," Caleb agreed quickly. They stayed like that for a long time until Susan had stopped shaking again.

Susan pulled away from him a little and looked at him. There was barely just enough light in the room that crept in through the curtains for them to see the other's outline. "Kiss me," she said, her voice the barest of whispers.

This time, Caleb leaned in and offered her a searing kiss, like the kind that he'd seen Eric and Tris exchange. Susan whimpered against his mouth, and her fingers tightened into the fabric of his shirt, but she did not break the kiss.

Caleb pulled away after a moment, and offered her a small smile. He brushed the hair off from her forehead, and cupped her face. "Is that how Eric kisses Tris?"

"That is how a man kisses the woman that he loves," Caleb whispered. He leaned down and kissed her again, before he pulled away a second time and started to kiss along her jaw line.

"Caleb… I…" Susan whimpered, and he stopped at once.

"Are you okay?"

"Y-yes, but… I don't… I don't know what to do," she whispered, the fear palpable in her voice.

"Do whatever feels right to you," Caleb reassured her as he nuzzled the side of her face. "I don't know what I'm doing, either."

"You know better than I… All of those dirty magazines that you looked at," Susan whimpered as she clutched at Caleb tighter.

"But they're just pictures; they can't be substituted for real life," Caleb said. "S-susan, I just wanted to let you know that you can tell me to stop if you feel uncomfortable, okay? Tell me to leave, and I'll leave, no questions asked. I can't leave your apartment, because it's after curfew, but I'll be out of your hair as soon as I can."

"I could never send you away, Caleb," Susan said as she cupped his face.

"I'm just telling you that it's always an option," Caleb said. "I don't want you to feel pressured into anything."

"O-okay," Susan said a bit nervously.

Caleb leaned down and kissed her again. He ran his hands through her hair, and then started to trail kisses along her jaw again. "I feel like I should be… I don't know, doing something with my hands?"

Caleb rolled his eyes, but commanded her, "Run your fingers through my hair." She did as she was told, and Caleb kissed her. She repeated the gesture a couple more times before she wrapped her arms around the back of his neck. "Now wrap your legs around my waist…"

"Um…" Susan whispered uneasily.

"I mean, if you want to," Caleb said quickly.

"No, I'll do it… just…" Susan released her hold on Caleb and pushed him away from her with her hand. She pushed her hips up and yanked her nightgown so that it was bunched up around her waist. Her panties were very plain and no-nonsense; nothing at all like the ladies in Caleb's magazines wore. Abnegation undergarments. Even her nightgown was exceptionally modest.

That done, she reached for him again. He settled between her legs, and she was quick to wrap them around his waist, as he'd told her to do. Caleb's erection pressed up against her vagina through her panties, and Susan quivered with an unknown pleasure.

"Oh… Caleb… I…" Susan whimpered.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No, please don't!" Susan whispered a bit desperately.

"Okay," Caleb whispered. He put his hands on her waist and pushed up her nightgown until it was up over her bare breasts. Then, he cupped her breasts and ran his thumbs over her nipples until they were hard.

He bent over her and started to gently lap at her hard nipple. He bit lightly on the sensitive flesh of her breast; not enough to mark her, but enough to get her to moan a little bit louder in response. Susan's hands trailed through his hair over and over.

Caleb pulled away from her and Susan let her legs drop back down to the bed again. He started to cover every single inch of her exposed flesh in wet kisses, starting from the bottom of her breasts and not stopping until he reached the top of her panties. Then, he kissed along the top of the elastic waistband before he pulled away from her completely.

His hand reached down and cupped her vagina. Susan jumped a little at the contact, but gave a low moan of pleasure. Caleb slowly started to rub her through her panties— they were already quite wet. After about a minute of rubbing her like that, he pulled her panties off all together.

"As an Erudite, we're encouraged to research anything that we feel like after we've become full members," Caleb said after he'd slipped the panties off from around her legs. "After I was shown the porn, I was super curious about female anatomy. Of course, I know the basics of sex, and I know how babies are made, but I wanted to know how to please a woman. I felt too embarrassed to ask anybody in Erudite, even though I'm sure that they would have given me a very enlightening explanation of the process. So, like any good Erudite, I turned to books, to other porn magazines, anything really, in order to find out how."

"I'm not sure that you could disappoint me, Caleb," Susan said gently as she reached for him. He grabbed her hand between his and pressed a gentle kiss onto the back of it.

Then, he released her, and knelt down between her legs. He gently pressed them further apart, and ran his fingers up the length of her pussy. He was more than a little surprised at the wetness that he found there, despite how damp that her panties had been.

"But I'm still a little uncertain of what I'm doing, so you're going to have to tell me what feels good," Caleb went on.

"It all feels so… Oh god," Susan panted. "It all feels so good!"

Caleb found her clit, and started to apply more and more pressure to it with his fingers. Susan whimpered loudly and her fingers clenched tightly at the blankets.

"Yes, I know that it feels good, but tell me what you feel," Caleb insisted.

"I…" Susan started, but then broke out into a low moan.

"How do you feel?" Caleb asked again. He started to move his fingers faster and faster over her clit.

Susan felt like she was going to explode. She wanted to ask Caleb to stop, but at the same time, wanted to find out what would happen if she actually did. She knew that Caleb wouldn't hurt her, and, despite his instance towards the contrary, he seemed to know what he was doing very, very well.

But she didn't know how she could possibly express all of this to Caleb. But despite her non-verbal answer, Caleb kept rubbing her clit, faster and faster, harder and harder…

Susan's fingers were starting to ache, and she was just starting to wonder if she could brave letting go when the dam inside of her broke. She let out a startled scream that quickly dropped down to a low moan as the most intense wave of pleasure washed over her. In the haze of this, she was vaguely aware of Caleb's fingers still moving over her clit, but at a much slower pace than a second ago.

Eventually, the pleasure backed off until Susan could think straight again. Caleb was still between her legs, his hands gently rubbing up and down on her thighs. She let go of the blankets and flexed her fingers a little to get the blood flowing into them again.

She swallowed hard and realized that she was very thirsty. Then, much to her surprise, she realized that she was pretty hungry as well.

"Are you okay?" Caleb asked as he moved to sit at her side. He gently stroked her hair, brushing away strands that had stuck to her forehead with sweat.

"Amazing," Susan replied and offered him a sleepy smile. "But… I'm kind of hungry right now."

"You are? That's great!" Caleb said. "What do you want? I'll get it for you."

Susan considered this for a moment. She wasn't sure how long that her appetite would last, so she didn't want to risk eating something too heavy. "Crackers?" she finally said with some hesitation. "And some water, too."

"Okay," Caleb said. He leaned over and kissed her tenderly before he got off the bed and hurried into the kitchen. She stood up briefly to pull her panties back on and to readjust her nightgown. There was a brief flash of light from one of the flash lights that they kept out there, and then she heard the sound of the pantry door opening and closing, the rustle of plastic, the running of water. A moment later, Caleb came back into the room, carrying the flash light clamped in his mouth as he juggled the glass of water and a tube of saltine crackers.

Caleb put both things down on the night stand, within Susan's reach, and went to go light a candle so that they could see. Susan reached for the crackers and pried open the plastic wrapper. She ate ravenously, and the more she ate, the more she realized how starving that she really was. Within minutes, all of the crackers were gone. She put the empty plastic sleeve on the table, and reached for the water.

"Want me to get you more?" Caleb asked from the other side of the bed. Susan shook her head no as she drained the last of the water. Once the glass was empty, she set it down, too. Caleb hugged her from behind, and kissed the side of her neck gently. "If I'd known that this would bring your appetite back, I would have tried this a week ago."

"I'm sleepy now," Susan said, her eyelids heavy.

"Good, good, maybe having an orgasm will help you sleep better, too," Caleb said. He pulled away from her and moved to get under the blankets again. Susan leaned forward to blow out the candle before she got under the covers, too.

She instantly moved into his arms. But a second later, she frowned as Caleb's erection poked her in the leg. "Caleb, you-"

"Shhh, it's okay," Caleb whispered before he kissed her on the forehead. "I don't want for you to worry about me, please. Just sleep and focus on getting better."

Susan nodded slowly, her eyes unable to stay open any longer.

* * *

Another nightmare shook Susan from her sleep. She jerked awake, and immediately reached for Caleb, only to find his side of the bed cold. She opened her eyes fully to find that the sun was shining brightly through the cracks in the curtains. There was a note on his pillow.

Susan

I hate to leave you alone without even saying good bye, but you were fast asleep, and I hated the thought of having to wake you from some much-earned rest even more. I hope that you feel better today.

I love you, and I won't be able to stop thinking about you at all today.

Caleb

Susan smiled to herself a little, although she was a little sorry that she'd slept in so long and missed seeing him off for the day. But she understood why Caleb hadn't woken her, because this was the most that she'd slept at all since everything had happened. She set his note aside on her night stand, and picked up his pillow.

It carried his lingering scent, and she held it to her nose for a long moment. She pretended like he hadn't gotten up to go in to work, and she'd woken up in his arms. He would probably ask her if she wanted any breakfast.

Susan had to think about this for a moment before she decided that yes, she was actually sort of hungry. So she put Caleb's pillow back and got out of bed. After she'd dressed, she poured herself a small bowl of cereal.

She tentatively ate it, uncertain of how it would sit on her stomach. She'd managed to keep the crackers down, but she didn't want to push her luck with cereal. When she was finished, she was still hungry, so she decided to chance another small bowl.

When she was finished with her second bowl, she washed the bowl and spoon and put them in the rack to dry. Then, she decided that maybe she'd go over to Caleb's apartment. He'd practically moved in with her since everything happened, and kept his apartment in name only. Sometimes, he stopped by there to pick up his mail, but otherwise, lived solely with Susan.

So she wrote out a quick note to Caleb in case he came back during lunch or something and she was gone. Then, she pulled on a light jacket, grabbed her purse, made sure that she had Caleb's key, and set out.

Since his place was on the opposite side of the city as hers was, she took the train in order to get closer. It saddened her a bit to not see any Dauntless jumping on and off the train— she'd never exactly approved of them doing it, but it was a normal part of life. Abnegation baked bread for the homeless, Erudite always had their noses stuck in some book, Candor would break out into overly loud arguments, and Dauntless would jump on and off the train as a test of their bravery.

There was a stack of mail just inside the door, which she picked up and started to sort through as she closed the door. Nothing but junk mail, but she put it all into her purse anyway. It was addressed to Caleb, and it was not her right to throw it away. She put her purse down on the kitchen counter and started to put away the few dishes in the rack that had been left out the last time Caleb had come by.

Then, with a surge of energy, Susan felt the desire to bake some bread. She knew that Caleb, raised an Abnegation, would have the ingredients, as well as a bread hook for a mixer, so she went in search of them.

* * *

After Susan left two loaves to rise, she ventured into Caleb's bedroom. Caleb had been very honest with her and his sexual experience the night before… or rather, his lack of experience. But, she was still super curious about the porn magazines that he brought up, and wondered if some of them had made it into his new home, or if they'd been left behind in his old apartment in Erudite.

She looked in the drawers of his night stands, but found only flash lights, candles, and matches in them. Next, she tried the closet. Only some of his old Erudite clothing, and some books, none of which were pornographic in nature.

After she'd closed the closet door, Susan looked around the room for a moment, contemplating where to look next. She finally got out a flash light from the night stand and got down on her hands and knees to peek under the bed. There was a fairly good sized box under there, and she pulled it out. Bingo.

Although, now Susan sort of wished that she hadn't bothered to look for them. The magazines on top had her blushing like crazy. They were exceptionally lewd, even though all of the models were fully clothed. However, the definition by which they wore clothing was very different than how Susan would have liked for them to wear clothes.

She wanted to shove the box back under his bed, take the bread, and go back to her own apartment. She dropped by to pick up his mail, and nothing more.

But curiosity overrode her common sense in the end. She picked up the closest magazine, which was entitled "Erudite Elites". There was a beautiful blonde model wearing glasses, in the act of taking her shirt off. While her bra covered everything that it was supposed to, it was still exceptionally revealing, especially in comparison to the prim bras that Susan liked to wear. Abnegation bras.

The cover talked about things like "10 ways to please your lover", "Interviews with so-and-so", and "Best ways to look business appropriate but still sexy".

Now more curious than anything, Susan opened the magazine to find the "10 ways to please your lover" article. She flipped to the page in question, but had to go past several different models, in various stages of undress along the way. But she finally reached the article and started to read.

"1. Have sex partially clothed," it started out. Susan mused this over a bit. Did last night count as sex? Caleb had made her feel so completely wonderful. He'd taken off her panties, but kept her nightgown on the entire time.

She moved on to the next one. "2. Tell your partner 'I need you now'." Susan was certain that she'd never be able to be that forward with Caleb. Maybe things were different in Erudite, but even if she had picked that faction, she would still be the shy, awkward person… just in blue clothing instead of grey.

"3. Try sex bartering, such as, you do the laundry, they give you a sensual massage." They took turns doing the different chores around the house; despite everything, Caleb still tried to be as unselfish as possible.

"4. One should dry hump as much as possible; it leads to great things." Susan didn't know what that meant, so she moved on to the next list.

* * *

After Susan finished looking over that magazine, she moved on to the next. And then the one after that. She sort of lost all track of time, and the next thing she knew, she heard the front door open.

"Susan?" Caleb called out.

"Shoot, sorry, I'm in here," Susan called out. A moment later, Caleb stepped into the doorway of the bedroom. He took a look at her, surrounded by piles of magazines that Susan had already read, with the box still in front of her, and just laughed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snoop, but I was curious, and then I started reading them… and…"

"No, it's okay, I want for you to follow your curiosity," Caleb said as he stepped over to her. He helped her up, and then kissed her briefly as a greeting. "Let's clean this up and put it back away again, and then get home so that we can put that bread in the oven."

"Oh gosh, I completely forgot all about that!" Susan exclaimed.

"It's okay," Caleb reassured her. "It'll be just as good now as it would have been if you'd pulled it out of the oven hours ago." He bent down to start picking up the magazines. "I hope that none of this upset you."

"No, it was… really eye-opening," Susan said as she started to help him. "Caleb… what's 'dry humping'?"

"Oh jeez."

* * *

Some time later, the two of them walked hand-in-hand back to Susan's apartment. Each of them carried a pan of unbaked bread under their other arm. "Susan, I've given this a lot of thought since last night, and I couldn't stop thinking about this at all today," Caleb started as they approached her apartment building.

"Yes?"

"I think that we should get married."

"What?" Susan gasped, barely able to catch her breath.

"I know that we've both been through a lot, but we're already living together, and we both love each other a lot," Caleb explained. "And… And if I hadn't been so stupid and self-centered, we would have probably been married, or at least engaged by now."

"Oh Caleb, of course I'll marry you!" Susan exclaimed. She moved into his arms and they kissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoyed both chapter three as well as the bonus content.
> 
> If you enjoyed both, please, take a second to leave me a review or kudos!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I try not to bog down my stories too much with personal updates, but as of late, I feel very unmotivated to work on A City, Divided. I've got a lot of other stuff going on; band, weekly meet-ups, my work, not to mention the fact that Nanowrimo is starting up again in a couple of weeks, and I'm more focused on that rather than Tris and Eric.
> 
> I don't plan on abandoning this, so please don't worry too much. Just understand that this is something that I'm doing for fun, and I'm not making any money from it. If I want to spend time working on an original novel, it's something that will bring me money in the future...
> 
> I just feel so guilty because I'm unmotivated. Maybe the swing of things will pick up after November is over. (Maybe, but don't hold your breath...)

“Beatrice, you have to understand that I’m an old woman,” April said. Tris hadn’t had a chance to visit her the day before, thanks to spending time with Susan, so she went the next morning instead. “I’m not quite certain how it is that I got dragged into your mother’s war, but I fully intend to stay out of this one with the Factionless. I was thinking about retiring when the shit hit the fan. So many people went out of their apartments that day only to end up being killed or captured. Do you want to know what I did?”

“What?” Tris asked.

“I fucking stayed inside and kept my nose where it belonged. Evelyn thinks that I was left alone because I was one of the Dauntless leaders, and I just didn’t wake up because I’m an old lady. That isn’t true, but I’m not going to be the one to tell her that some of us actually have some common sense left.”

“Eric and I couldn’t just sit by and let Jeanine kill people,” Tris said. 

“And it was well within your rights to try and stop her, just like it was within my rights to stay in bed until the sound of gunfire had ceased,” April said roughly. “For what it’s worth, I hope that you can stop her. They’re tearing the city apart. Although, if you ask me, not all of the blame on everything can be put on Jeanine and Evelyn.”

“What do you mean?” Tris asked with a frown. 

April gestured around the room. Much like everybody else who’d been relocated, the room was bare and devoid of the little things that made a place look inhabited. But Tris figured that April didn’t specifically mean April’s new apartment. “The watchers,” she started. “They, like their name suggests, watch us. But what did they do when even we knew that Jeanine was planning something big?”

“They didn’t do anything,” Tris said slowly.

“Exactly. And when Jeanine actually did do something, and thousands of people died because of Jeanine, what did they do?”

“Nothing.”

“Now you’re getting it,” April said with a sarcastic chuckle. “What exactly was their plan to stop, first Michael, and then Jeanine from killing the divergents? To send your mother into the city? To do what, exactly? Not like I have anything against your mother or anything, but the truth of the matter is that, by the time that Natalie was put into the city, things were already pretty bad for divergents. If they really wanted to take care of the problem, they would have sent in somebody to fucking kill the bastard, and anybody who took his place if they agreed with his philosophy of ‘divergents must die’.” 

Tris looked down at her hands; April had a very valid point. “My mom says that the watchers are only one part of the equation,” Tris started slowly. “The first step, if you will. We do things, the watchers watch everything. Then, they splice together our actions into a cohesive storyline, which is then broadcast to the rest of the world to consume.”

“And then what? The entire world fucking watched thousands of very real people for-real die, and… what? They thought that it was entertainment?”

“I can’t tell you what those people think, because I’m not those people,” Tris said. “But that’s what I think, too. That they’re just watching a show, and they think that it’s all fiction.”

“Tell that boyfriend of yours to work on making those electronic dampening devices of his,” April said.

“I’ve brought it up before, but Evelyn is keeping those who might have the knowledge to create weapons away from the materials that they might need,” Tris said. “I don’t think that she or any of the other Factionless are aware of the watchers, but they’re worried about us rising up against them.”

“When everything starts to fall apart, and it’s all because of Evelyn and her Factionless, just remember this: the divergent still have a wildcard in play,” April said.

“What’s that?” Tris asked.

“The watchers.”

 

* * *

Tris left shortly after that. But instead of reporting for work, she just walked around aimlessly, thinking about the conversation that she’d had with April. She knew that she’d be dinged for missing two days of work, but she could not care less. The entire system was incredibly stupid, and it was not getting any better since the Factionless had taken over.

Was April right? Was there some advantage to knowing about the existence of the watchers? Of knowing the purpose of the city, of the people in it?

The watchers hadn’t done anything to stop Jeanine from turning Dauntless into a zombie army, and then from using them to kill a lot of people. And they sure as hell weren’t doing anything to stop Evelyn from taking over. 

Natalie had said that the city existed as a social experiment. But an experiment on what was the question that weighed heavily on Tris’s mind at the moment. 

She did not sign up for any of this, and she’d be damned if she’d just sit by and be complacent in some bullshit experiment that was the basis of “entertainment” for the rest of the world. 

Tris had walked over to the edge of the city, which was surrounded by a 3-story tall chain-link, electric fence with razor wire at the top of it. As if somehow the height and the electric part weren’t deterrent enough. She looked out over the horizon. Any which way that she looked, there stretched a large expanse of nothing. Inside the city, there was lush growth, signs of life, but outside was complete wasteland. 

How far away was the facility where the watchers watched over the city? Just over the horizon? Father? Where they even close at all to the city that they observed?

Tris turned away from the fence and looked out over the city, or at least, as much as she could see from where she stood. There were some remains of buildings left standing from some by-gone era, but most of what remained were skeletal structures. Everything else had been stripped away to use for something else. 

The tallest building in the city was currently being used as the top anchor and starting point for a mile-long zipline. Some of the Dauntless-born had once invited Tris to go ziplining with them, but she’d declined. Now, Tris had a desire to get onto the roof of the building, and it was not because she was in need of an adrenaline rush. 

 

* * *

It took her a good half hour to reach the building, only to find the doors locked.  Who locks the doors on a skeletal building? Tris wondered as she rattled the doors to make sure that they weren’t just somehow stuck.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Four asked as he walked over to her from some other building. 

“Shouldn’t you?” Tris replied quickly. 

“I’m on guard duty right now,” he explained. And indeed, it looked as if he was ready to stop crime from happening. “It’s you that I’m asking about.”

“I have better things to be doing than to sort through people’s garbage,” Tris said as she started around the side of the building to try to find another entrance, maybe one that wasn’t locked.

“So you left work early because you felt like ziplining?” Four asked with a cocked eyebrow. 

“You presume that I ever went to work in the first place,” Tris said. They’d come around to the side of the building, where there was a door that might have been used for deliveries back when the building had been in use. Tris tried them, but they were locked, too. 

Four grabbed Tris’s arm and spun her around to face him. “Look, Tris, my mom is already keeping a close eye on you. The absolute last thing that you should do would be to skip work to goof around.”

“You know nothing about me,” Tris said as she wrenched her arm out from his grasp and took a step away from him. “And don’t presume like you do.”

Four regarded her for a long moment. “You’re still working for your mom with the divergent uprising.” It was not a question. 

“We were not rising up against anything,” Tris spat at him. “The only thing that we wanted was to not be killed by Jeanine.” She turned on her heel and started around towards the back of the building.

“Can I tell you something?” Four asked as he followed after her.

“And if I don’t want you to talk to me, let alone follow me around?” Tris said with annoyance. 

“I’m a divergent, too,” he said evenly. That stopped Tris in her tracks. “But I don’t exactly walk around and advertise it.”

Tris spun back around to face him. “And you think that I do?”

“Well, at least I didn’t run around with a bunch of criminals!”

“Excuse me? Did you not fucking hear me, not even two seconds ago, say that our only goal was to not have Jeanine kill us?” Tris spat at him. “You know what, fuck you. I’m going to work, because apparently, it’s the only time when I’m not being bothered about my divergence.”

She turned around and stalked away without bothering to try the other doors. She’d talk to Uriah or Zeke about getting into the building later… only she didn’t know where they’d ended up. She might have to go talk to her dad in order to see his list.

 

* * *

“I had an idea after I spoke with April this morning,” Tris said to Eric after he got home that afternoon. Following her encounter with Four, Tris had been too wound up to actually go to work, so she went home and started to throw things around her apartment.

“How is she?” Eric asked.

“She’s fine,” Tris said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But I was talking with her about the divergent, the Factionless, and the watchers. She pointed out that, no matter what happens, we’ll always have a wildcard on our side: the watchers.”

“Okay…” Eric said slowly. “Maybe I’m missing something here, though, because they’ve given exactly zero fucks about us when Jeanine tried to take over, and when Evelyn actually did.”

“No, but if we actually went to where they view all of the footage, they’d have to pay attention to us,” Tris said quickly.

“You want to leave the city to find them?” Eric asked, his voice low. “Do you even know where this place is?”

“No, but my mom does,” Tris said, the volume of her voice matching Eric’s.

“Okay, so you talk your mom into taking you— all of us— over there. Then what? We just pound on the door and…?” He made an open, “go on” gesture.

“Okay, so maybe we don’t have to go to the watchers,” Tris said after a moment of silence. “We can just leave. Live in that house in the middle of nowhere and live off the land. Like you said.”

“We’re just going to leave everybody else here to deal with Evelyn and the factionless?” Eric asked, his gaze softening.

“They can do whatever they want. Once we cut through the fence, we won’t be limited to staying in the city anymore.” She paused to consider this for a moment. “And, at any rate, I’d be surprised if people weren’t coming to be in the city right now anyway. They know that we know about them, and now, we’re talking about leaving the city. You’d think that they’d at least want to stop us from leaving just to preserve their little ‘science experiment’.” She made air quotes around the last two words. 

“It’s not exactly like you’re screaming your idea from the rooftops, and literally everybody’s going to leave the city,” Eric pointed out with a roll of his eyes. 

“No, but I’m not exactly going to steal off in the middle of the night, either,” Tris said quickly. “But I’d very much like to see what Evelyn plans to do about our talk about wanting to leave the city. She’s already got us working the shittiest jobs on the rotation roster. Oh, by the way, I ran into Four today. After I left April’s place.”

“Four? What the hell was he doing running around that part of town in the middle of the day?”

“Actually, I ran into him around the zipline building,” Tris said. Eric’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. “It’s the tallest building in the city; I was hoping that, from up there, I might be able to see where the watchers are.”

“What did he say to you? The last time you were alone, he sexually assaulted you. Did he try anything again?”

“No, he didn’t,” Tris said gruffly. “He was upset that I wasn’t at work, and told me that I was already on very thin ice as it was. Then, he insulted me and all of the divergents over and over again, calling us stupid for sticking our noses where they didn’t belong.” Tris took a deep breath before she went on. “He told me that he’s divergent, too, but that he ‘knew better’.”

“Says the guy who rode in on the proverbial white horse to save the day,” Eric said with a roll of his eyes. Then he paused to consider Tris for a moment. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re probably going to hate me because of it, but please don’t rush to conclusions.”

“Okay…” Tris said slowly, with a look of confusion on her face. “I’ll try to hold off judgment until you’ve told me the entire story.”

“I knew that Four was part of a group, but I didn’t know what they called themselves. Didn’t know that it was the Factionless. And I sure as hell didn’t know what he was the son of the leader. But he kept coming to me to try and get me to join.”

Tris frowned slightly. “I… I remember, right when I joined Dauntless, I accidentally overheard you and Four talking about something. I sort of brushed it off as being Dauntless leader stuff or something, but I knew that it was none of my business. I forgot all about it until just now.”

“Wait, when was this?” Eric asked her sharply.

“Like… the second or third day that we were there?” Tris said with some hesitation. “I wanted to get into the classroom where we’d been practicing gun stripping to get a gun to practice on-”

“Wait, I remember that; I gave you my gun,” Eric said.

“Yes, that’s right!” Tris said with a small smile. “I was really intimidated by you, so I acted like I hadn’t been listening at the door.”

“I just want for you to understand that I thought that Four was completely full of bullshit, and it sounded like he was being injected by whoever the leader was,” Eric said. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “He would never tell me the leaders name, but said that I’d find out if I just went to a meeting.”

“But what did he say?” Tris asked with a frown. 

“About how we should not shuck off parts of who we were in order to fit into society. But the problem with the factions was that literally everybody just went along with the status quo, even though it didn’t make any sort of sense. Like I said, I thought that he was full of shit.”

Tris shook her head slightly. “How the hell could you have known that, not only where they not as full of shit as you thought, but that they were waiting in the wings to swoop in the second that things started to go to hell?” She moved to him and he embraced her. “I don’t blame you at all. None of this is your fault.”

“Good, I’m glad,” Eric said before he kissed the top of her head. Tris tilted her head back and he kissed her lips briefly before he pulled away. “What sounds good for dinner?”

 

* * *

“I’m a little bit nervous,” Tris said as they walked into the apartment building. 

“Don’t be,” Eric said as he pressed the call button for the elevator. “My parents and sister are excited to meet you.”

“Yes, but what if they don’t like me? If they don’t like my relationship with you?”

“Then it’s their problem, and not ours,” Eric said as he leaned down to kiss her. “We’re the ones in a relationship, not then. And honestly, we wouldn’t even be going to meet them if the factions hadn’t been torn apart. I want for you to meet my family, though, since I’ve known yours for a while now.” 

The elevator dinged as it arrived on the ground floor, and they pulled apart. They rode up to where Eric’s parents lived in silence, and then walked down the hall. Eric knocked on the door. 

“Oh my gosh, you must be Tris,” a blonde woman about Tris’s age said when she opened the door. She was wearing a smart, black and white business suit, although her hair was pulled into the no-nonsense hair styles popular with the Erudite. She swept Tris into a warm hug, before she ushered the two of them inside. “I’m Elizabeth. Eric has told me so much about you.”

“He’s told me a lot about you, too,” Tris said as she offered Elizabeth a small smile. 

“These are my parents, Katherine and Patrick,” Eric introduced the older couple. “Mom, dad, this is my girlfriend, Tris.”

“It’s so good to meet you, honey,” Katherine said as she swept Tris into a hug as well. Then, Tris shook Patrick’s hand.

As Tris looked at Eric’s parents, she could see where Eric got most of his appearance from. He looked a lot like his mother, but his eyes and jaw line were completely his father’s. 

“Please, sit down,” Katherine said as she moved back into the kitchen area. “Dinner is almost ready.” Elizabeth gestured to Tris to take a seat at the dining room table, and sat down next to Tris. Eric sat on Tris’s other side.

Patrick helped his wife to carry serving trays over to the table. “Would you like some milk, Tris?” he asked as he went to the refrigerator.

“Yes, please,” she said, and then Patrick came over and filled up her glass.

“Eric tells us that you were a leader-in-training in Dauntless before everything,” Katherine started as she settled into her seat. 

“Yes, but I’ve fallen from graces with Evelyn,” Tris said carefully as she helped herself to some food. 

“More like Evelyn thought that you were somehow working against everything that she is and judged you accordingly,” Elizabeth said with a roll of her eyes. 

“Elizabeth!” Katherine said sharply.

“What? It’s true!” Elizabeth pointed out. 

“Ah… Well, what did you do?” Tris asked openly. 

“I worked at the school, as a high-level geology teacher,” Patrick said. “You might have seen me around, but I generally don’t get a lot of Abnegation students.”

“No, we view education beyond what’s necessary as being self-indulgent,” Tris said a bit sourly. “Which is stupid, because nobody likes stupid people.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Patrick said with a big grin. “You would have made a fine Erudite.”

“Yes, I tested for Erudite,” Tris agreed. “But I picked Dauntless.” She looked over to Eric. “And I’m glad that I did, even though everything went to hell, I’m glad that I did.” Eric offered her a small smile.

“Well, I was well on my way up to following in mom’s footsteps,” Elizabeth spoke up. “To become a biologist and figure out the most effective way to raise our live stock. I was the top of my class in Erudite this past year.”

“Congratulations,” Tris said. 

“That’s what I was studying, too,” Katherine said. “But right now, Evelyn’s got me working mostly with the animals. She says that since I spent so much time studying them, I should at least have some hands-on experience with taking care of them.”

“That’s stupid,” Tris blurted out. “You’re doing work that would benefit everybody in the city. But now Evelyn would rather that you get out of the lab and clean up feces?”

“Thank you, I completely agree,” Katherine said calmly. “She’s setting important, scientific research back months, maybe years, because she has something to prove.”

“Well, we got her message loud and clear,” Elizabeth said. “She can stop now, and tell us to go back to our work.”

“I honestly think that we’re wasting more time learning how to just do the basics of the jobs that she’s got us doing,” Tris said. Everybody else nodded with agreement.

“And the children,” Patrick spoke up. “Nobody’s teaching the children. They aren’t even in school right now, but work along with their parents. How in the world is that okay? Children need time to play and socialize with others their own age.”

“What? What happened to the children’s work law?” Tris asked. It was an old law that had been in place since before anybody could remember that stated that no child under 16 could work, because it would be detrimental to their physical and emotional well-being. Nobody had ever questioned the law before, and everybody usually agreed with it. If a family couldn’t afford their home, or to buy money for their children, the centers in Abnegation were always more than willing to help in any way that they could. 

Although Abnegation children were brought up to help around the community, it was simple work, such as picking up litter, or baking bread in the community centers for the hungry. But they did this in their free time, and only after they’d finished their school work.

“Those from eight to fifteen are given simple tasks, such as helping out with the live stock, in the fields, or in the soup kitchens,” Patrick explained. “Anything younger than eight are sent to the community centers for the day, where older kids watch over them.”

“And nobody thinks that they should be in school instead of allowed to play at the community centers?” Tris said with venom.

“Tris, nobody loves education more than my father,” Eric said. 

“Personally, I’m hoping that once the kinks get ironed out from her system, things will go back to normal,” Katherine said.

“Don’t hold your breath, mom,” Elizabeth said sourly. “I’ve heard talk from Factionless members that this was her plan from the get go.”

“Well, she can’t possibly hope to have things the way that they are forever,” Katherine said. “Productivity is down, as Tris said. We’re spending so much time learning how to do jobs that we’re wasting time when we could be already doing it.”

“I didn’t say that I disagreed with your points, mom,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just saying that Evelyn expects for us to become experts in literally all of the jobs that there are to do in the city, and that we’ll take turns doing them. What is that phrase? Jack of all trades, master of none?”

“Yes, that’s the one,” Eric agreed. “So you’re saying that it would be better if we were just assigned one job, or better yet, allowed to pick our own job, because then we could all be masters at that one thing?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. 

“There’s not much that Tris or I can do about it, though,” Eric said carefully. “Evelyn has throughly tied our hands. The other day, Tris went to visit with her parents, and was dinged because of that. Evelyn said that she might have been conspiring against the Factionless.”

“She has to know that this can’t possibly last,” Elizabeth said with a roll of her eyes. “History doesn’t exactly take too kindly to dictators and their regimes, after all.”

“With how quickly that she squashed the divergent under my mom’s so-called rule, and how she continues to squash any sort of issues, it would take a lot of work in order to get her out of power,” Tris said with a frown. 

“Our problem is that Evelyn is a skilled strategist,” Patrick said. “She saw what was going to happen, and was more prepared for Jeanine’s attack than the divergent were. And it sounds like she knew exactly how to cripple the divergent movement.”

Tris let out a frustrated sigh and shared a look with Eric. “At this point, we’re not even going to argue that we are not, were not, nor were we ever planning to be anything other than acting in our own self-interests,” Eric said as he turned to face his family. “But nobody ever believes us, so…” He gave a “what are you going to do about it?” gesture. 

Elizabeth opened her mouth to reply when a loud beeping sound came from the screen set into the wall. It was used to broadcast emergency reports, such as blizzard or tornado warnings, or to give information about a missing child.

“I wonder what’s happening?” Katerine asked as Patrick got up to switch it on. Evelyn’s face filled the screen. She was in an office that over-looked a park.

“I know that park,” Tris said blankly.

“That’s Jeanine’s office,” Patrick said as he came back to sit at the table again. “What’s she doing there?”

“Citizens, it has been a tumultuous fortnight since Jeanine found it fit to put most of Dauntless under mind control and send them to slaughter thousands of people,” Evelyn began after a moment. “But a team of people has been working around the clock to try to get to the bottom of the events that occurred. Even though our city is entering into a new era, we will still abide by upholding the legal system, and thus, Jeanine Matthews will be tried. The trial will begin on Monday. As you might imagine, there is a long list of people that will be called to the stand, both as active participants in Ms. Matthews’s plans, but also as the victims of her cruel acts. Those people will be given notice, however, depending on the events that unfold during the trial, it is unclear when a specific person might be called to testify.”

“There’s no doubt that we’ll be asked to testify,” Eric said to Tris. She nodded with agreement.

“Yes, but will you be a victim, since you were found being held in Erudite when the Factionless stormed in, or will you be charged as an accessory, since you were technically spying for her?” Elizabeth asked. 

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Jeanine’s naming every damned person that she can think of in order to help save her ass,” Eric spat out. “And my name was probably at the top of her shit list.”

“Just tell the truth, and tell them about how she captured and tortured you, denied you food, water, and any sort of meaningful rest,” Patrick said quickly. 

“Don’t worry, I plan on doing just that,” Eric said through clenched teeth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading and sticking with this story! If you're enjoying everything so far, please take a few seconds to drop me a review or to leave kudos to tell me so. It really makes me happy whenever I get new ones.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of your support, guys. I feel a lot better now.
> 
> Too bad that I can't manage to get much more work done, but hey... have another chapter?! :D

The day following Evelyn’s announcement about Jeanine’s trial, a courier dropped by Tris’s apartment only a few minutes after the curfew had been lifted for the day. She and Eric were barely out of bed when he knocked on the door.

“Beatrice Prior?” the courier asked.

“That’s me,” Tris said around a yawn. The man handed her an envelope. 

“And Eric Coulter, I presume?” the courier asked Eric.

“Yes,” Eric agreed carefully. 

“I was told that you might be here,” the man said as he handed Eric an envelope, too. “Have a nice day.” 

“Thanks, you too,” Tris said. She closed the door and ripped her own envelope open, while Eric simply tossed his aside and started to make breakfast for the two of them. The room was silent for a moment as Tris read over her summons. “It only just says that I’m to testify in court. Doesn’t say anything else.” She reached for Eric’s envelope and opened it too. “It’s exactly the same as mine is. It doesn’t even say what they’re going to talk to you about.”

“I’m not surprised,” Eric said with a snort as he put slices of bread into the toaster. “Half of the city is probably going to be called up onto the stand, and Evelyn— or rather, her lackeys— didn’t have the budget to run off specifics for every single person that they would call to the stand.”

 

* * *

“Tris, oh thank goodness that I finally managed to find you,” Christina said as she raced towards her friend as Tris went to find out what her job posting for the day would be. 

“You know where I live, though?” Tris said with a frown. 

“Yes, but this is urgent, and I needed to find you,” Christina said. “I tried your apartment, but you weren’t there, so I raced here in the hopes of finding you before you went off to work for the day.”

“What is it?” Tris asked with some worry. There was really only one thing that Christina might find so urgent that she’d literally run all over town in order to find Tris for. 

Christina took Tris by the arm and lead her away from the daily listing boards. She lead Tris a few blocks away, until they were completely alone. 

“I have good news and then some bad news,” Christina said. “The good news is that we have a very solid lead on the thing.” Even though they were alone, she still spoke cryptically. 

“Where is it?” Tris asked with a sinking heart. 

“The word is that Evelyn has it.”

“What?” Tris asked, trying very hard to keep her voice low. “How the fuck did she end up with it?”

“I don’t know,” Christina said. “But Evelyn has moved into Erudite HQ now that their leader is currently in jail, awaiting trial. By the way, I got a summons to testify.”

“About what? You were under mind-control for most of the events,” Tris asked.

“I don’t know, but I guess that we’ll find out, won’t we?” Christina said. She tried to smile, but couldn’t even get her mouth to correspond, and instead, just gave Tris a morose look. “I don’t know what the plan is to get it back, though.”

“We’ll need to have one, won’t we?” Tris said. “We’re all keeping our heads down, and even my mom said that we won’t have any more meetings.”

“Oh, come on, I know you better than that,” Christina said with a roll of her eyes. She offered Tris a friendly punch in the arm. “You and Eric are going to be at the front of whatever plan goes down.”

“Yes, we will, but we’ll probably be the only ones,” Tris said. “It’s better for the two of us to go down rather than the rest of the divergents.” Eric’s outburst at dinner last night, before Evelyn’s announcement, about how nobody ever believed anything that anybody said about the divergent group, lingered in her mind. But she also knew that once word got out about a possible location for the USB, other divergents would want to go and get it, too.

“We’ll see about coming up with a plan, then,” Christina said after a long stretch of silence. “I’ll keep you in the loop. We’d better get off to work before we roll into the next shift.” 

“Yeah,” Tris agreed absently as she followed Christina back to the center of town. 

 

* * *

It was only a few minutes before curfew on Sunday night. Tris was not looking forward to the trail in the morning, and she knew that Eric wasn’t, either. They made some sort of silent agreement not to discuss it. After all, they’d said everything that the other needed to know about the issue; what more was there to say?

They were both curled up on the sofa with their books. Tris’s bare feet were under Eric’s legs, and the hand not holding his book was resting on the top of her knee. They were just counting down the minutes until the power went out for the night when somebody knocked on the door. 

“It’s almost ten,” Tris said with a frown as Eric put his book down and got up to see who it was. 

Christina, Marlene, Uriah, Lynn, and Zeke all barreled into the room as soon as he’d opened the door, and Uriah closed it again. 

“What the-” Eric said through clenched teeth. Tris put her book down and stood to greet her friends. 

“So sorry to just barge in on you like this so late,” Lynn apologized. “But we’re planning to move in on the USB tomorrow. Evelyn will be presiding as the prosecutor for Jeanine’s trail tomorrow, and the Erudite HQ will be empty.”

“Please, sit,” Tris said, and gestured to the sofa. She started to move the chairs from the kitchen table over while Eric started to go around and light the candles so that they could have a little bit of light. A moment later, the power went out for the night.

After a moment, everybody was settled. “Okay, what’s going to happen?” Tris asked.

“Our source says that they believe that Jeanine kept the USB in one of four secret labs,” Christina started. “We just got out from a meeting with the others who are in on this, and they said that tomorrow would be the best time to retrieve it, like Lynn said.”

“We all agreed that we wanted to keep the strike force tomorrow as small as possible, and naturally, we volunteered,” Marlene went on. “We knew that you’d want in on this, too, so we weren’t too worried about being able to find our way around the HQ, because of Eric’s background with the Faction.” Eric nodded slightly with agreement.

“We’ll have to show up first thing for the trail, because that’s when they’re finally going to announce the order that people will be called in for,” Zeke went on. 

“But we’re confident that this entire thing is going to take a loooong time,” Christina finished. 

“Will there even need to be a trial once we show what’s on that USB?” Lynn asked.

“I don’t know what’s on it,” Tris said quickly. “Not even my mom is sure.”

“Yes, but it’ll put her into her place, won’t it?” Lynn asked quickly. 

“We think that it might, but we’re not sure,” Eric spoke up. “But we’re coming up with a plan… Okay, so finding the USB wasn’t even our main plan to begin with, and we weren’t even sure if we were going to find it at all.”

“We want to cut the fence open and make a break for it,” Tris interrupted him. 

“What?” everybody asked in almost unison. 

“Is that even possible?”

“It’s just an electric fence, guys,” Tris said with a roll of her eyes. 

“Okay, but would we even be able to survive outside of the city? I mean, can we sustain life?”

“There are millions of people who live outside the city,” Tris said, and then held up her finger to stop anybody else from speaking out at the moment. “Please don’t ask me how I know this. I just do, okay? But, we need to have a back-up plan if what’s on that USB doesn’t convince Evelyn to stop.”

“Or if it’s just not there,” Eric said sharply. “Just who exactly is this informant?” The others all exchanged a look.

“We don’t know,” Christina said with some hesitation after a while. “We just got called into a meeting to discuss the plan. They had all of these maps of the main Erudite building, and a lady— one of the ones that I sent you to meet with, Tris— said that somebody had told her that they were certain that the USB was being kept in one of four secret labs in Erudite.”

“Can you recreate the maps, so that I have a vague idea of where we’re headed tomorrow?” Eric asked.

“I can,” Uriah spoke up. “Do you have a scrap of paper?”

“Sure,” Tris said as she went to go find him some paper and a pencil. Uriah bent over it for a moment, and then showed it to Eric. 

“The informant says that the labs are back here. He doesn’t know which one that it’ll be in, though, so we should presume that we’ll have to search all of them,” Uriah explained. 

“I know where it is,” Eric said as he took the paper and pencil from Uriah, and expanded on the map a little bit more. “There’s entrances here, here, and here, in case we need to make a quick escape. What’s the situation been like there since Jeanine fell?”

“Factionless have taken over the building,” Christina explained. “They’ve been there nearly round the clock. Please don’t ask how the informant knows about the USB, because, as we’ve said, we don’t know.”

“It’s not how he knows about it that I’m worried about,” Eric said. “It’s the guard situation.”

“We think that the guards will be lax around the building because of the trail, as I explained when we came in,” Lynn said. 

“There might be guards left behind to watch over the other prisoners,” Eric said. “The holding cells in the main Erudite building are on the top floors, to prevent people from getting any ideas about jumping to freedom. The rooms that we’re looking for would be on the ninth floor, just under the holding cells.”

“What kind of weapons do we have?” Tris asked.

“Oh no, like Evelyn would risk weapons falling into the hands of people who might stand up against her?” Christina said quickly with a roll of her eyes.

“So we’re going into a Factionless-controlled building, only one floor down from where some posted guards might be, you think that security might be lax tomorrow, and we have no weapons other than some kitchen knives and our fists,” Eric said dryly. “Hope you guys have been practicing your physical training, because we’re going to need it.”

 

* * *

“You think that this is crazy,” Tris said later, after the others had gone, and the two of them were in bed.

“Honestly, Tris, don’t you?” Eric whispered to her. “The odds are stacked against us right now. We’d be better off going with your plan to somehow cut through the fence and just leave than to try and mess with finding the USB.”

“But should we just leave our friends to their fates?” Tris asked. “They’re going to go through with it, regardless.”

Eric was silent for a long time. “What are we going to use to cut the fence, though? If we put metal against that fence, we’ll be fried. Getting a car and enough supplies to last us until we can find other people to help us out would be easy in comparison to cutting through the fence.”

“There’s got to be an electric box somewhere,” Tris said with conviction. “Maybe we could turn the power off?”

“Fat chance,” Eric said. “The power goes out every night at ten, but the fence remains on, 24/7.”

“So it’s powered by an outside power source. Doesn’t mean that the electric box isn’t in the city somewhere.”

“The city is huge, Tris. How long will it take you to search everywhere in order to find it?”

“Okay, then how can we best cut through the fence without being fried ourselves?” Tris asked.

“I don’t know,” Eric said with a slight shake of his head. “I should have been researching for this, no matter what, but I kept putting it off and putting it off.”

“Should we go through with the plan tomorrow, though?” Tris asked next. “After all, if we can’t just vanish into thin air, we might as well help them.”

Again, Eric remained silent, and instead, just pulled Tris into his arms. He pressed a kiss onto her forehead. “I almost lost you once. I don’t think that I would be able to live with myself if anything happened to you again.”

“I know that it’s a risk, and I also don’t like the fact that we’ll all be weaponless, but we’ll have the element of surprise on our side. It’s our only shot, Eric,” Tris whispered to him urgently. 

Eric only just held Tris tighter and buried his face in the side of her neck. After a moment, Tris felt a dampness there.

“I’m scared, Tris. More scared than I was on the night before Jeanine’s attack.”

“I’m scared, too,” she replied gently. “I just want for all of this fighting to end. And maybe showing the USB to Evelyn— to everybody— will help.”

 

* * *

The forum was bustling with people the next morning, all hoping for a good seat for the trial, or, like Eric, Tris, Christina, and the others, to find out the order that they’d all be testifying. 

“It’s in alphabetical order!” somebody from near the front cried out after a lot of jostling. “There isn’t too much question, here!”

“It won’t be long before I’m called to the stand, then,” Eric said to Tris. “Once we’re finished today, I’m going to find as many books on the subject as possible so that we can leave before then.”

Tris nodded once and grabbed tightly onto Eric’s hand so that they wouldn’t be separated in the crowd. They left the forum and headed to a former cafe, where they’d all agreed to meet up before they went to the main Erudite building.

Lynn and Zeke were already there, and after a moment, Uriah and Marlene showed up, too. 

“It’s a complete mad-house over there,” Marlene said as she slicked her hair back into a ponytail. “Christina is probably caught up in the crowds.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t know why Evelyn’s bothering to put on this sham of a trail,” Eric said bitterly. “What’s she trying to hide?”

“That’s what we’d all like to know,” a voice said from the other mouth of the alley that they waited in. They all spun around.

“Four,” Tris spat out. “What the hell are you doing here? Have you been following me?”

“Whoa, please, calm down,” Four said quickly. He was carrying a long, flat box in his hands. “I come bearing gifts.” He set the box down on the top of a trash can and lifted the lid. There were eight guns there, as well as several clips. 

“Why are you doing this? What’s your end game?” Tris demanded him. 

“Who the hell do you think told everybody about where the USB is?” Four said quickly. 

“What’s in it for you?” Eric shot back at him.

“I don’t trust my mom; she’s up to something, and whatever it is, it can’t possibly be good,” Four said flatly. 

“Oh, you mean like how she just barged in and dismantled the entire function of the city within an hour?” Lynn spat at him. 

“Look, guys, I don’t trust him any more than you do, but we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth right now,” Uriah pointed out. “We’re in desperate need of weapons, and Four has provided them for us. Who cares what his end game in all of this is, so long as he’s on our side now?”

“Fine,” Marlene said with a resigned sigh. She reached for a gun, and the others did, too. 

It felt good for Tris to have a gun back in her hands once again. She loaded a clip into it, and then grabbed a couple for back-up, but she prayed that she wouldn’t have to fire it at all.

Christina ran up a moment later, but she stopped dead when she saw Four. “What is he doing here?” she asked sharply. Tris went over to go talk to her friend.

“None of us trust him, but apparently, he’s the one who gave us all of the info on the USB,” Tris whispered to her. “Plus, he brought guns a lot a of bullets.” 

Christina looked at the gun in Tris’s hand, and then over her shoulder at Four. “Okay. I don’t like it, but okay,” she said. She left Tris’s side and went to get a gun for herself. 

Once everybody was armed, Four picked up a stick off the ground. “Okay, listen up, this is what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re going to approach the building from the side entrance, and then take the stairs up to the ninth floor, where the labs are. The labs are down a hall here, and hidden behind an office.” He drew a crude drawing in the dirt with the stick. Tris wanted to tell him that they knew where they were going, but everybody was nodding along and looking at the map. 

“Since there’s now two people who know where we’re going, maybe we should split up into two groups,” Marlene said. “That way, in case one group is caught, the other still has a chance.”

“Good idea,” Four said. He looked around at everybody, and his gaze lingered on Tris for a moment too long. She felt uneasy at the thought of being sent off with him, and hoped that Eric would raise a fuss if Four asked for her to be on his team. “Eric, pick your teams.”

“Tris, Lynn, and Uriah,” Eric said without hesitation. 

“Then you three are with me,” Four said to Christina, Marlene, and Zeke. 

“Since the point of separating ourselves is to not get both of us caught, we’ll be going in through another way,” Eric said to his team.

“Wait, what should we do if one of us finds it?” Christina asked as Eric’s team started to leave. 

“Get to the forum and play the file,” Tris said without hesitation. “Do whatever you have to do, just make sure that you play it. Don’t worry about us, just play it!” They all nodded with agreement. 

Eric gave a silent signal, and they ran off from the area, careful to make sure that they weren’t acting too overly suspicious on the off-chance that somebody had left the forum and returned to their home. 

“Honestly, I’m glad that we’ve split up now,” Lynn said once they were some ways away from their meeting place. “I don’t trust Four as far as I could throw him. And while I’m sorry that the others will have to be stuck with him on the off-chance that he betrays them… better them than us.”

“What? Do you really think that he’d put his neck on the line for us like this and then just turn around and betray us?” Uriah asked.

“I don’t know,” Eric said coolly. “But I’m with Lynn on this, and I don’t trust him. Let’s hustle it up and try to get there before they do.”

They went a few more blocks before they got to the central building in Erudite. It was becoming disturbing familiar to Tris as of late, and she hated that. Eric led them down a winding path that would take them to a side door on the building. After checking to make sure that nobody was around, Eric motioned for Uriah to open the door while he ran into the building.

They waited a tense moment out in the alley before Eric motioned them inside. 

Everything was too quite and it put Tris more on edge than she already was. Eric led them down the hall, to a stairwell. “We want the ninth floor,” Eric whispered to them before they started to climb. 

When they reached the sixth floor landing, they heard the distant sound of gun-fire. “S-shit,” Lynn stammered out as they picked up the pace. A moment later, a door further down burst open.

“Hey, there’s more up here!” a Factionless guard called out.

“In here!” Eric whispered to them urgently. They ran into the door on the seventh floor, which was filled with offices. They ran down the hall, and Eric tried the office doors as they passed them. The second one was unlocked, and he ushered everybody in, and quickly locked the door from the inside. 

He started to look through the desk drawers until he came up with a pen and a piece of paper. He drew a quick map, indicating where it was that they needed to go, only it was more detailed than the one that Uriah had given the night before. Once he was finished, he pressed it into Lynn’s hand. “Memorize this as quickly as you can, and then destroy it. We might have to split up.”

Lynn was about to say something when they heard distant voices. “Check all of the offices. They might have crawled in here to try and wait us out,” somebody said.

“Are you sure? I don’t think that anybody’s been up here since the Factions were torn apart,” somebody else replied.

“Do you honestly think that they’d give two fucks about that? I want the entire floor searched!” 

Tris gave Eric a desperate look. There was no other way out of the room that she could see; if the Factionless guards found them, they were toast. 

Eric motioned for them to be quiet, and motioned them back away from the door. Tris just thanked whoever was listening that the doors were solid wood and that there weren’t any windows facing the hall. Whatever these offices had been used for, the people working in them clearly hadn’t been high up on the food chain. The people working in them might not have appreciated that fact very much, but Tris was thankful that it provided them a safe place to hide… at least for a moment. 

“This is fucking stupid,” a voice said. It sounded like he was walking down the hall. “Who the hell does he think that he is, just bossing us around like that? What exactly do you think that those people are in here for anyway? What the hell could anybody possibly want with old research files? Everything else was destroyed in the takeover.”

“I don’t know,” a second voice replied. “They probably broke in on a dare or something. You know, cause thrills are hard to come by these days, since we’ve outlawed stupid stuff like train jumping. But we still have to at least pretend like we’re doing something. They probably came running through here and left out the other stairwell.” 

The first person said something in response, but they were two far away by now to make anything out. Tris was relieved that they hadn’t taken the other man seriously when he’d told them to check the offices. They were safe… at least for now. 

When they could no longer hear either of their voices, Lynn made a motion towards the door. Eric held up his finger to make them wait. The seconds seemed to drag by, but Tris had no desire to run into anybody else if they could avoid it. They’d already had one close encounter— they didn’t need another because they were impatient. 

Finally, Eric looked over to Lynn. “Did you memorize the map?” he whispered to her. She took another long, look at it before she stuffed the paper into her mouth and chewed. Eric then went over to the door, and slowly unlocked it before he opened it and peeked out into the hall. 

Once he’d determined that it was clear, he motioned for them to follow him out into the hall. They ran down the opposite way that they’d come from, and Eric lead the way into another stairwell. They quickly started to head up again, hoping to make it to the ninth floor before something else stopped them. 

Thankfully, nothing eventful occurred between floors eight and nine, and they came up onto the ninth floor without further problems. 

Tris knew that the secret labs that they were looking for were hidden behind some other labs. She knew in general where they were, but she didn’t want to even think about having to find them without Eric. 

“Honestly, if they were on the seventh floor, what in the world would they be doing up here? All of the stuff in the labs was destroyed,” a voice said. 

“He said to check all of the floors in case they somehow escaped, but are still in the building,” a second voice replied. Eric ushered them quickly into the nearest room. 

Tris recognized the lay out as being a laboratory of some sort, but all of the equipment was gone. As Eric led them across the room, glass crunched under foot. Tris looked down and saw the shattered remains of beakers and flasks, and cringed. Not at the fact that there was a lot of glass that they had to walk over in order to reach the other door, but rather, at the thought of what the destroyed lab equipment meant. 

She remembered the conversation with Eric’s family a few nights ago, and about how Katherine had said that Evelyn was putting important, scientific research back years. 

But Tris could not afford to think of that right now, and pushed the thoughts out of her head as the voices of the Factionless guards drew closer. They made it through the other door and had closed it just as they heard the door in the lab that they’d left open. Eric gestured for them to hurry across this lab, which they did. 

The four of them ran from lab to lab, seemingly always one step away from the guards who thought that they couldn’t possibly be in the building.

“I’ve lost count, how many labs to go now?” Lynn whispered as they ran across yet another lab.

“It should be just one more,” Eric replied quickly. 

“What are we going to do? They’re still right behind us,” Tris whispered urgently. 

Eric looked around the room wildly before he pointed to a former supply closet. If they all squeezed together, they just might fit inside. They doubled back to it and Uriah wrenched the door open. Tris pressed her hand her her mouth to keep from crying out loud— even though a lot of the things in the lab had been destroyed, apparently, nobody had wanted to destroy the jars of pickled organs. 

Eric roughly yanked her into the closet, and Lynn closed the doors behind them. And not a moment too soon, because the door to the lab opened, and they heard the two guards walking through. 

“How long do we have to keep this up?” the man asked. 

“Ugh, until Zimmerman gives us the all clear, okay?” the woman replied shortly. “Look, there are worse things that we could be doing right now. Would you rather sit in front of those fetid prisoners for another few hours?” The man remained silent, and a moment later, they left that lab for the next one. 

Eric made them wait a moment. A jar pressed uncomfortably into the small of Tris’s back. She hadn’t exactly gotten a good look at everything before Eric had pulled her in,but she didn’t want to think about what might be in that jar specifically. 

“According to Four’s information— if he’s correct— the entrance to the hidden labs should be in the next lab over,” Eric started after a minute of silence. “But I don’t know where the entrance into those labs might be.”

“We’ll split up and look for it,” Uriah said quickly. Eric nodded slightly and slowly opened up the closet doors. When he was certain that the coast was clear, they left the closet and headed over towards the door to the other lab. Eric peeked through the window in the door before he opened it and motioned everybody in. 

“The blueprints of the building indicate that there’s nothing behind that wall,” Eric said, and pointed to the far wall while he strode across the room to check through the windows on the other doors to make sure that the Factionless guards were nowhere around. 

Tris, Uriah, and Lynn quickly started to look all over the wall, touching everything that they could in the hopes of finding some secret switch or something. 

Finally, after about ten minutes of searching, Lynn found a small, hidden switch under a lab table, and what they’d thought was another supply closet swung forward, reveling a well-lit hall. 

Without any other hesitation, they hurried into the hall and closed the door behind them so that they wouldn’t be found by the guards. “Well, Four was right about the hidden labs,” Eric said. “Let’s find out if he’s right about Jeanine having had possession of the USB.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys probably knew that this was coming as November approached, but, once again, I'm putting this on hold as I work on an original novel.
> 
> (In case anybody's interested, it's the prologue to the novel that I worked on in July.)
> 
> Also, in case you guys hadn't figured this out already, but I tend to work with a buffer system when I'm writing stuff that I'm also uploading onto the internet. But, where I am right now (which is not really anywhere near where THIS chapter is, sorry...) is getting pretty close to the end. Just when you thought that things couldn't possibly get any worse... BAM! New problems! Of course, I'm trying to stick to the original books, even though the longer my series goes, the more AU that this gets. But still. I'm sure that you could probably predict what new adventure awaits Tris and Eric next.
> 
> But, enough teasers. More on this later. :P

There were four, unmarked doors on either side of the hall. “We should each go into a room to find out if the USB is in there,” Tris said without hesitation. 

“Good thinking,” Eric said. “We’ll meet back in the hall, and take the USB to the forum.”

“If it’s here,” Lynn said dryly as she moved towards the door on the far left. Tris picked the room closest to her on the right, and Eric the room across from her, which left Uriah the room on the far right. 

They all looked around at one another. “One…” Eric started.

“Two,” Tris joined him.

“Three,” Uriah and Lynn joined them in counting.

They all opened their doors in unison and stepped into the rooms. 

The room that Tris had picked had a strange, blue back-lighting to it. She turned around to see what Eric’s room looked like, but the door slid closed behind her. She panicked, uncertain if the door would be able to open up again or not, and rushed over to the door. She tried to open it, but there weren’t any handles or anything that she could get a grip on from the inside. 

She started to pound on it when a fine, mist was released into the air. Tris put her hand up over her mouth, but she knew that it was already too late, that she’d inhaled some of whatever had just been put into the room. 

Tris felt weak, and started to slid down on the door when another door at the other end of the room slid open. Tris wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but anything seemed better than collapsing— maybe dying— in the entrance of the strange room. 

She needed the support of the wall, and the closer she got to the other door, the hazier her vision became. It was hard for her to focus on what was happening. 

Why was she here? 

Where was she anyway? 

Why did she feel so funny…?

The other room was back-lit with blue light, too, only brighter than the first room had been. There were two, small tables, one with a vial sitting under a display case, and another with a USB propped up and also in a display case. 

Yes, that’s right. The USB. Evelyn. Must…

Get…

Tris took a few, unsteady steps over towards the case with the USB in it, but then she collapsed. 

Must…

Get…

She reached up for it, but then blacked out. 

 

* * *

“Tris, Tris, can you hear me? Stay with me, Tris!” The passionate, worried cried of Eric seeped in through Tris’s subconscious. She cracked her eyes open, and then let out a pained groan. 

“Eric?” she somehow managed to get out. “What happened?” Her words seemed slurred, even to her ears. 

“Shh, don’t try to talk, okay? There was a poison in the room that you went into that was released as soon as the door closed,” Eric explained. They were running somewhere. She was in his arms.

“Antidote? Room?” Tris managed to get out. 

“Yes, that was the antidote, but the person that I trust the least right now is Jeanine,” Eric said. “So I’m taking you to the hospital to see if they can help you on top of that antidote that I poured down your throat.”

“Drive?”

“Uriah took it to the forum,” Eric said quickly. Tris could see the communal hospital a few feet in front of them. “Lynn collapsed, too, but I could only bring one of you, and there was only enough antidote for one person. I chose you.” 

Eric raced up the steps to the hospital, and a nurse opened the door to allow them in. 

“What happened?” she demanded as another nurse race over to them with a gurney. 

“She was poisoned. I don’t know with what,” Eric explained as he gently put Tris down on the gurney. 

The first nurse started to bark out orders, ordering this test and that medicine. The nurses raced Tris back into another room, Eric on their heels. “How did she become poisoned?” 

“I don’t know,” Eric snapped at them. “I just… found her, lying on the ground.” At least that part was probably true. 

“Can you at least tell us where she was when you found her?”

“Erudite,” Tris said. As time went on, her head became less foggy, her thoughts more clear. Even as she spoke, her words sounded less slurred. “Messing around with chemicals.”

“Great, so the good lord only knows what you ingested,” the nurse said as she stormed off. Somebody poked a needle into Tris’s arm and drew a blood sample before another nurse attached an IV. A second later, somebody hooked Tris up to a heart monitor, and the room was soon filled with a steady beeping. 

For a brief moment, Tris was left relatively alone for a moment with Eric. “I’m super worried about Lynn. I left her in the hall outside of the main labs, but maybe the guards won’t think to check that floor again because it was already cleared. I don’t know what sort of poison that she got hit with-” The way that he said that made Tris think that Eric knew full-well what Tris had been hit with, but was covering their asses by not telling the nurses. “-but either way, like I said, there was only enough antidote for one person.”

“If the-” Tris started, but broke off as another nurse came over to them. She checked the monitors that Tris was now hooked up to, and then bent over to check the reaction of Tris’s pupils with a pen light. 

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the nurse asked.

“Three,” Tris said. 

“Does anything in particular hurt more than usual?”

“My head,” Tris said quickly. “My knees, but I fell and hit them first.”

“Okay,” the nurse said slowly. She made a note on her tablet as she walked away. 

“If the others are okay, they might be able to find Lynn and get her here, too,” Tris said to Eric quickly, under her breath. 

“I hope so,” Eric said. “I would go back for her, but we got the hell out of there as fast as we possibly could. I like Lynn, but not enough to put my life in further danger by going back to her.”

“The antidote must be working okay, because I’m starting to feel much better,” Tris said as she flexed the fingers on her hand that wasn’t hooked up to the IV drip. 

“Good, I’m glad,” Eric said. He reached out and picked up Tris’s hand. He brought her hand up to his mouth and gently kissed the back of her knuckles.

A second later, the monitor set into the wall sprung to life. “Attention… Attention please…” Uriah’s voice came. The video was dark, like he was intentionally blocking people from seeing him. 

They could hear the sounds of people banging on the door in the background of the video feed. Tris didn’t know where Uriah had ended up in order to get the video to show to everybody, but she hoped that he would be able to hold off the people long enough to play the video.

The feed went fuzzy as Uriah started up the video. A second later, the camera focused on a woman, maybe in her early 30’s. She had blonde hair in a stern bun, like how the Erudite wore their hair, and she was wearing a black suit jacket with a purple shirt under it. 

“Hello, I am Dr. Amanda Ritter,” the woman started. “I have a PhD in psychology from Harvard. I practice psychology in an office for two years before the government hired me to observe the various, on-going sociological experiments that they were currently running. I was first asked to observe those who had indirect actions with the test subjects, before I was asked to oversee the mental health of the subjects themselves.

“However, as the first project I was asked to oversee wrapped up, I was next asked to participate in the next project, code-named ‘Divided City’. The basis of ‘Divided City’ is to set in motion the idea that one part of the population is somehow different than the rest. The test is to see how people who are perceived to be different will be treated by those who believe themselves to be unlike the others. They keyword that I have been given in this is ‘Divergent’.

“However, it is important to note that the idea of divergents is completely false, fabricated, if you will. There is no such thing as being divergent.”

Amanda looked off the camera for a moment, and somebody off to the side handed her a piece of paper.

“In the city, the people will be divided into four ‘Factions’: Abnegation, the selfless; Candor, the honest; Dauntless, the brave; and Erudite, the intelligent,” Amanda read off from the sheet. People will be segregated based upon which facet of their personality is the most predominant. Only having one of these aspects is considered to be ‘high quality’, however, having two or more would make them divergent. 

“However, since whittling down people into very narrow holes is not something that people are used to doing. It’ll take a lot of brainwashing in order for the project to be a success, which is why this memory serum will be used to over-ride any sort of common sense in regards to this issue. If Factions is the only thing that people know, then they’re more likely to just go along with it.”

“What in the world is she talking about?” a nurse whispered.

“This is some sort of a joke… right?” another one asked. 

But Amanda went on. “The scientists on this project hope that this will be a multi-generational experiment, but we’ll see what the results say when it’s over. They might end the project if things get too bad. Like all of the recent experiments before this one, Project Divided City will be televised across the entire world. No matter what happens in the city, the world will watch every move we make.”

Amanda reached forward to accept another piece of paper from off camera. “All of the initial test subjects have given written consent, but, as I mentioned a moment ago, the project would not be feasible without the memory serum. It erases memories that make up the background of a person, such as that time in third grade when Sharon Johnson pushed you off of the monkey bars, or when Chris Higgins kissed you behind the bleachers when you were sophomores in high school. However, the serum keeps core memories, such as language skills and fine motor abilities, such as ones ability to tie your shoes or to cook.

“Tomorrow, we will be brought into the city and be given the serum. The experiment will begin. Tomorrow, I will no longer be Dr. Amanda Ritter, PhD, but instead, take on the name of Edith Prior. I’m recording this video for the sake of future documentation.”

The video went fuzzy for a moment. Tris and Eric exchanged a look. That woman was somehow related to Tris, and she might be the key to everything. 

After a moment, the video changed again. A young woman was now sitting in front of the camera, in front of a white back-drop. Tris recognized the girl at once: her mom, when she was maybe a few years younger than Tris was right now. Tris’s breath caught in her throat. She’d never seen a picture of her mom from before. The tattoos on her arm were exceptionally prominent, although the sleeve wasn’t as complete as it was now.

“Hello, I am Natalie Wright,” Natalie began. “I am fourteen years old. I was born in Detroit, Michigan. The people running Project Divided City have brought me in in order to help restabilize the experiment. They are exceptionally worried about the state that it’s in as of late. The current Erudite leader, Michael Norton, is on a mission to kill all divergents. However, since the entire focus of the experiment is to test people’s reaction to perceived differences in others, and the entire concept of being divergent or not is one-hundred percent fictional, the people running the experiment fear that Mr. Norton will kill everybody in the city before too long.

“I need to record this video in order to help document the problem. I will carry it into the city, and hide it in the event that I need to use it as a last resort to help save the city. However, what I have learned while with the people who run the experiment is entirely too sensitive to take into the city, so my memory will be wiped with the memory serum. I will remember my childhood, as well as my mission, but not the inner workings of the people who run the experiment.”

Natalie paused for a moment and looked directly into the camera. “If you are seeing this video right now, then things are much worse than any of us could have anticipated. 21, 14, 4, 5, 18, 7, 18, 15, 21, 14, 4,20, 21, 14, 14, , 5, 12, 19.”

The video went hazy before it was replaced by what seemed to be a still image of some sort of control room. Uriah was nowhere in sight. 

Tris started to pull off the devices that she was hooked up to, but Eric stopped her before she could yank the IV out from her arm. “What the hell do you think that you’re doing? You almost died!” he hissed at her.

“I’m feeling much better now; the antidote’s kicked in,” Tris whispered urgently to him. “I can’t just lie here while Uriah is arrested by Evelyn for being the one who actually managed to get the video to play!”

“Tris, please think about this for two seconds,” Eric hissed at her. “Nobody knows that we were there. If we go racing down ther, then it’s only going to get worse for us. We need to try and figure out what happened with Four, Christina, Zeke, and Marlene. And about how this video has effected everything.”

Tris pulled the IV out from her arm and swung her legs around to the other side of the bed. Then she stood up, but the room spun uncomfortably around her, and Eric had to steady her.

“I’m okay…” Tris whispered after a moment. She started towards the front door of the hospital, Eric trailing after her. Nobody moved to stop them. 

Apparently, the things revealed into the video were too shocking to the medical staff to the point where they neglected their patients. 

Not like Tris really cared about that right now; she felt much better, and she had more pressing issues to take care of at the moment. 

The streets were as empty as they had been as they’d gone to the Erudite building, only now, there was a disturbing, ominous feeling to the absence of everybody. 

“Where should we go?” Tris asked after they’d gone a few blocks away from the hospital. 

“To the forum to find out what’s happening over there? How everybody’s reacting? Or, more importantly, how Evelyn is taking to this update. After all, she was the entire reason why we went to all of that trouble.”

They turned down a street and started to head in the correct direction. When they got closer to the forum, they could hear an angry roar of thousands of people.

When they got to the building, they rushed over to the doors that would take them down to the seats, but everything was a giant mess. People were running around and screaming, mostly down by the stage. The stage itself was completely obscured by the mass of bodies. There were a few people— mainly the children and elderly— crouching in fear under the seats to avoid being attacked or trampled.

“Shit, this is bad,” Eric growled out as they took in the scene before them.”

“What can we do to stop them?”

“Nothing,” Eric said as he turned to look at Tris. “If we go in there, there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be torn apart, or at least trampled!”

“But we’ve got to do something!” Tris said as she yanked the door open. Eric huffed with annoyance, but followed after her. They race down one of the stairs that would take them to the center of the forum. 

“There’s Beatrice Prior!” somebody shouted. The cry was picked up over and over again until all eyes were on the two of them, halfway down to the stage.

The forum fell silent after that. 

“What’s going on here? What happened?” Tris asked for a lack of anything better to say.

“We were all so angry that Jeanine decided to kill so many of us because she thought that some of us were different,” somebody said, their voice ringing out in the silence. 

“That video has told us that we’ve been so very, very foolish.”

“We were all swept up in the movement…” 

Then, somebody stepped off from the stage, followed by a few others, and then everybody moved to show Eric and Tris the stage.

Tris gasped with horror. In a bloody mess on the stage were Jeanine, Evelyn, and several of the Factionless. Jeanine’s empty eyes stared up at Tris. 

“What are we supposed to do now?” somebody asked. The woman’s voice was quiet, but rang too loud in the disturbing silence in the forum. 

“Everybody, move those bodies out of here,” Eric said, stepping up to the plate when it was obvious that Tris wasn’t capable of saying anything at the moment. Tris was still staring with horror at the bodies. 

As some people moved back up onto the stage to take the bodies away, Tris’s line of sight was finally broken. She turned away from the stage, and Eric wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She pressed her face into his side.

“Evelyn was horrible, but she didn’t deserve to die like that,” Tris whispered, her voice muffled by his shirt. 

“I can’t say that I never saw this coming,” Eric whispered as he stroked her hair. “She probably saw it coming, too, although she just didn’t want to admit it. She knew that oppressing the people and continuing to oppress them would not make people happy. She had to have known that everybody would eventually rise up and just gang up on her. The only question was when.”

“My question is: when will the killing end?” Tris asked. Her fingers tightened in the fabric of his shirt. “Hasn’t there been enough already?”

“Sometimes, it’s important to keep things in perspective,” Eric said. “Kill one person, save thousands. She was a dictator, and nobody but those that she’d brainwashed were happy under her reign. She wasn’t any better than Jeanine; she only just gave with better packaging.”

Tris remained silent. Eric gently kissed the top of her head, then her forehead, followed by a light kiss on her lips. Then, she buried her face against his chest for a long time. 

“Ms. Prior, the stage has been cleaned up,” somebody said. Tris wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she looked over her shoulder and saw that the bodies had been removed and the stage hosed down a little. There was still a big, rust-colored stain, but it wasn’t as thick as it had been.

Tris pulled away from Eric, but grasped his hand. She led him down to the stage, and he willingly followed after her. 

“First off, has anybody seen either of my parents?” Tris called out as soon as she reached the bottom of the forum. 

There was a beat of silence. A few whispered words, but nobody spoke up. 

“Somebody, go try to find them,” Tris barked out in her best, Dauntless initiate instructor voice. Several people broke off from the crowd and left the forum. 

“Sit DOWN and be QUIET!” Eric barked out. “It doesn’t matter where you sit, just sit DOWN!”

While everybody shuffled to the nearest empty seat, Eric turned to Tris. “What’s the plan?” he whispered to her. 

“We’ve got to calm them down,” Tris said. 

“They already seem to be much calmer now that you’re here,” Eric pointed out.

“Yes, but how long will it last? We need to assure them that we’re going to work on a solution, at least.”

“Are we going to re-instate the Factions?” Eric asked.

“It’s going to be tough with so many from Abnegation dead,” Tris said, close to tears. “The survivors aren’t going to be able to do the regular jobs by themselves. I can understand not working with the homeless or helping out in the soup kitchens, but we’ve got to step up to the plate to help with the crops, the animals, and the food.”

“Right now, I think that people are angrier at Jeanine killing all of the Abnegation in the first place than the thought of having to help out in the fields,” Eric said after giving it some thought. “Let’s go off from the idea that if we ask them to help out until Abnegation has a chance to regain some of their old numbers, then people will step up to the plate to help. After all, this is something that’s going to be affecting everybody. We need food.”

Tris considered his words for a moment before she gave a firm nod of her head. She turned away from Eric and looked around the forum. 

Everybody had found a seat, and they were all watching the two of them expectantly.

Tris took a step forward to the front of the stage. She cleared her throat.

“I understand that you’ve all just had your words rocked. For the second time in about a month. For a lot of you, part of what was revealed in the video was nothing new. The divergent have known that all of our movements are being recorded, watched, consumed. For all of us, we’re just now finding out that we’re all divergent… and none of us at the same time. I’m… not even quite sure how to process this information, myself.

“I’m not even going to guess at what my mom remembers from her time before, but as soon as she gets here, we’ll find out. Right now, there’s something that’s a little more pressing. I know that nobody has been overly happy with the Factionless dismantling the Factions, which is why it’s important that we try to get back to normal life. Life from before. However, with so many of the Abnegation now gone, it’s left a giant hole in our society. We need people to help tend the crops and animals, and to help make the food. We aren’t going to force people to do this; we’re only asked for volunteers. This also isn’t a permanent thing, and will only last until Abnegation has the numbers to, once again, do it on their own.”

Tris fell silent and looked around the forum to judge people’s reactions. Everybody was whispering to their neighbors, but they didn’t seem overly angry.

A moment later, a door burst open. “I found them!” a man yelled, and Natalie and Andrew stepped through the door, too. 

The whispering grew louder as the two of them started to make their way down the stairs to the stage. 

“Are you okay?” Natalie whispered to Tris once they got close to one another. “The man who came to get us said that Jeanine, Evelyn, and a handful of Factionless had been killed right after the video finished.”

“I’m fine; we weren’t here,” Tris said. “Eric, I, and a few others went to get the USB. I was poisoned, but Eric gave me an antidote before he took me to the hospital. Uriah— another member in our group— was the one who got the video on the air. I don’t know how he is right now, and I don’t know what happened to the rest of our group. We split up, and I think that the other team was captured.”

“None of that matters right now,” Natalie said quickly with a slight shake of her head. “We need to focus on the public, because they’re afraid. And people who are scared do stupid things. Like to kill Evelyn and Jeanine.”

“I think that Tris has managed to calm them down a little bit,” Eric spoke up. “We’re asking people to step up and volunteer their time to help out with the crops, the animals, and the processes of making food.”

“Okay…” Natalie said slowly as she processed this. “Okay, good.”

‘What do you remember from your time with the Watchers?” Tris asked her mother.

“I literally have no memory of making that video,” she said slowly with a thoughtful frown. “And the more I try to think about it, the more I think that a lot of what I remember is just my mind trying to fill in the blanks somehow. I don’t remember what’s real about my time there and what I just made up.”

“Okay, but we’ve got to do something about them before everybody starts to tunnel out from under the electric fence and storm in to kill them, too,” Eric said.

“Wait, what did you just say?” Natalie asked him sharply.

“The people are going to be angry at the thought that other people witnessed all of the shit that we’ve recently been through and nobody lifted a finger to help us,” Eric said with an annoyed look on his face.

“No no, not that, the other part,” Natalie said quickly.

“They’d probably do anything in order to get to the Watchers at this point,” Eric said. “And since it would be near suicidal to try to go over the fence, obviously, the easiest way would be to go under it.”

“Twenty-one, fourteen…” Natalie started slowly. 

“Those numbers… You said them at the end of the video,” Tris said slowly, with a thoughtful frown on her face. “What do they mean?”

“I couldn’t remember until Eric said it just now, but it’s come back to me all of a sudden…” Natalie said. “Do you have a scrap of paper?”

Eric and Tris both shrugged. Andrew stepped to the front of the stage to address everybody. 

“Does anybody have a piece of paper and a pen?” he asked. A few people stood up, and came forward to the stage. 

With some paper and a pencil, Natalie crouched down on the ground to write. Andrew, Tris, and Eric looked over her shoulder to see what she was writing.

First, she wrote down all of the numbers that she’d recited in the video; there were eighteen in total. Then, she started to write an alphabetical-numeral cypher, where A equals 1, B equals 2, all the way until Z equals 26.

“It’s a code?” Tris asked with some surprise when she realized what her mom was doing. 

“What did you say? And why?” Andrew asked with a frown.

“Give me a second to figure it out…” Natalie said as she finished writing the cypher. 

Then, slowly, she started to translate the numbers that she’d written down. 

“U-n-d-e-r-g-r-o-u-n-d,” Tris whispered along as her mom wrote the letters out. “Underground!” Then… “T-u-n-n-e-l-s. The underground tunnels!”

The four of them looked around at one another with confusion. “Have we been sitting in our way out from the city this entire time?” Andrew said, speaking what was on everybody’s mind.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Nanowrimo was a success for me. I was totally focused on my project that it's been exceptionally difficult for me to get back into the swing of THIS project. But, I'm determined to see this through to the end, so please don't worry.
> 
> I do hope to have completed this before the Nanowrimo event in April. I do NOT want to put this off a third time...
> 
> Of course, having the holidays here is NOT helping anything at all, since I'm so distracted by parties and baking and decorating, on top of the actual celebration... Ugh. Anyway, Happy Yule to those who celebrate.

“The thing is, people look at me and expect for me to burst into tears or something,” Four said slowly as he, Tris, and Eric walked along the dark streets. It was after curfew, but they’d just freed their friends from being held by the Factionless after Evelyn’s death. While everybody else had gone their separate ways to their own homes, Four trailed after Tris and Eric.

“She was your mother,” Eric pointed out.

“Yes, but she abandoned me with my abusive father when I was seven,” Four pointed out. “She only contacted me when she wanted something from me; when I was in a position to help her out. Not because she was worried about me,but because she knew that I now had something of value to offer her. I don’t know how she felt about me, but the only thing that I based my relationship with her on was how she treated me. Which was a business relationship. She was no mother to me. She stopped being my mother the second she walked out on me.”

Tris pressed her lips together and focused on the ground under her feet. She didn’t know what to say in response to that. She’d know that Four had a lot of problems, but she’d never imagined the depth of them. 

“I’d sat and listened to my mom talking about her grand plan for a few years now, but when the time came and she took over… suddenly everything was very real,” Four went on. “Too real. And more than a little frightening. I didn’t like what was happening. I heard everybody complaining about how they didn’t like it. 

“In theory, Evelyn’s idea of living in a factionless society where we all shared the burden of keeping the city running seemed like a good thing. No more social ostracization because you decided to leave the faction that you were born into, even though they encourage children to actually do that.”

Four paused, his eyes on his feet as well. “But… in reality,” he said slowly. “It’s not good. People are too used to doing the things that they’ve been doing. And, after having seen that video, I think that other societies aren’t always set up like this. But this was how we were all raised, and our society will be damned if we let it come to an end just because one person thought that we’d be better not like we are.”

The three of them lapsed into silence for a moment. “I just wanted to say, Evelyn didn’t care about divergents. That was all Jeanine. I thought that I was a divergent, too, and I told Evelyn about that. She didn’t care. Said that in her new world order, nobody would even have a chance to find out if anybody was divergent or not because there would be no factions. No factions means no simulation serum, either for aptitude testing, or for Dauntless initiation. I think that that’s the part that I liked the most about what she had to say.”

“We were all a part of the experiment,” Tris said to him gently. “Somewhere along the line, it got completely out of control.”

“Yes,” Four said slowly, his eyes still on the ground. “Evelyn did not specifically want for Jeanine to attack everybody, especially not in such a wide-scale way that she did. But Evelyn saw what was happening, probably like your group of divergents did. However, unlike your group, Evelyn ordered for no action to be taken directly against Jeanine. She wanted for chaos to reign so that she and her factionless could swoop in and save the day. To take over, and instate her factionless rule.”

“In my mind, knowing about such events as what Jeanine did and doing nothing to stop them makes you just as guilty as if you’d done them,” Eric said sourly. 

“What’s that old saying? Hindsight is 20/20?” Four said quickly. “Nobody suspected the lengths of what Jeanine was planning, or else we might have gone in to try and stop her. Or at least to try to control some of the damage. So many innocent people died! I can’t close my eyes at night without seeing the faces of dozens of little children— much too young to even begin to suspect that they were divergent— lying dead in the streets.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Tris said quietly. 

“But Evelyn only cared about the big picture,” Four went on with a snort. “Said that there wasn’t anything that we could do for those that Jeanine had already killed, but that there was something that we could do to help the survivors.”

“Yes, but did you ever think that there was something that could have been done for the people who died?” Eric asked. “Before they died?”

“Look, I already told you that we saw the writing on the wall, too, but that we didn’t anticipate Jeanine to do something on such a massive scale,” Four snapped at him. 

“But you were even more prepared and ready to go to war with Jeanine than Natalie’s Divergents were!” Eric rounded on him. “But instead of helping to stem the tide as soon as you all realized the extent that Jeanine was going to, you continued to sit back and do nothing! You only swooped in when things were at their absolute worst!”

Four was about to say something when Tris stepped between them. “Please, stop fighting,” she said. “A lot of people died, including Jeanine and Evelyn! There’s nothing that we can do about it, and we don’t have a way to go back and fix everything! And fighting over it isn’t going to solve any of our problems now.”

Four spun away from Tris. “Sorry,” he mumbled under his breath, but they still heard him anyway. 

Eric’s nostril’s flared out with irritation. “Please,” Tris mouthed to him. The hard look in his eyes softened, and he reached for Tris. She went into his arms. 

“I want to talk to Tris for a second,” Four said, still not facing either of them.

“Go ahead,” Eric said coolly. 

“Alone,” Four said sharply as he spun around to face them. He then held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I won’t touch you, I promise.”

“Fine,” Tris said with a sigh. She stepped away from Eric, his hand trailing over her arm for a second before she pulled away completely. “I’ll be okay.”

They walked a few feet away, where Eric could still see them, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“I just wanted to apologize. For assaulting you when I rescued you that day in Erudite,” Four started.

“I accept your apology. But don’t think for one second that me accepting it excuses your behavior, either then, or just now.” She motioned over to where Eric stood. “And don’t think that this makes us friends.”

“I know that I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past,” Four went on as he ran a hand through his hair. “And I’m really trying to make up for everything that my parents have done. Not only Evelyn, but Marcus, too.”

“Four, Evelyn did a lot of shit to the city. Stuff that I’m not quite sure that we’ll be able to recover from quickly,” Tris said gently. “Yes, you went along with her, but in the end, it was you who lead us to the USB in Erudite. I’m going to make sure that people know that when the trials start. And, don’t you forget for one second that there will be trials over everything that happened. We might be trying to move past this by pretending that it never happened, but we also don’t want for people to forget what happens when they decide to take the matter of running the city into their own hands.”

Four hung his head. For a long moment, Tris was sure that he wasn’t going to say anything at all. “Yes, I understand. It’s the only thing that I could ask from you right now.”

“But you are not Evelyn,” Tris went on. “And don’t think for one second that you are anything at all like Marcus.” Four looked up sharply at Tris, hurt in his eyes. “I don’t know how much of that article is true. When it first came out, my dad said that it was Erudite, working to smear all of the Abnegation leaders. But after I got to know you a bit better… and after everything that’s happening… I don’t know what to think. All I know is that you’re a hell of a lot braver than Marcus ever was. And please don’t forget that.”

“I… T-thank you,” Four said, his eyes back on the ground again. “I… I should go.” He brushed past Tris and hurried off as fast as he could while not making it look like he was running off with his tail between his legs. 

Eric was at her side in an instant. They stood and watched Four run off until they could no longer see him. “What did he say to you?” he asked after Four had turned a corner and was gone. 

“He asked for my forgiveness about how he assaulted me after he rescued me in Erudite,” Tris said slowly. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. “I said that I accepted his apology, but it didn’t excuse anything else that he’s done. Then, we talked about his parents for a moment. He’s the one who helped us find the USB. I told him that I would let everybody know what he did, even if he initially stood by his mother.”

Eric was silent for a moment. He snaked his arm around Tris’s waist and she leaned heavily onto his side. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

“Yes, home. It’s been such a long, long day.”

 

* * *

“This is a rough map of the tunnels under the city that we’ve explored,” Natalie said as she spread out several pieces of paper out over the tables. All of the surviving leaders from the factions, plus representatives from the divergent group were in the official meeting hall on top of the forum. 

It was two days following the retrieval of the USB, and the murders of Jeanine, Evelyn, and four other Factionless members at the hands of the angry citizens of the town. The divergents in Natalie’s group had meet that following day and had tried to discuss the best course of action following everything that had come to light during and following the playing of the video. 

They’d gone back and forth for hours over the issue of wanting to bring everybody else in town into the idea that there might be a way out of the city. They’d finally come to an agreement that they should at least include the remaining Faction leaders in on our their plan. 

Of course, Abnegation’s former leaders had been some of the first people to die. Presently, Natalie and Andrew were the only people from Abnegation at the second meeting. Nobody else had stepped up into the leadership role. At least, not yet. 

“Enough people have already died recently,” Jack Kang, one of the Candor leaders, spoke up as they looked down at the map. “I’m not willing to send people to explore the tunnels on some off-chance that there’s a way out from the city.”

“We’re not asking for people who don’t want to go,” Natalie said. “There are more than enough people who are willing to want to risk it.”

“We’re only telling you any of this as a courtesy,” Eric said sharply. He had been strongly against telling anybody outside of Natalie’s group of divergents. His argument being that he’d known that Max, one of the Dauntless leaders, had also been a spy for Jeanine. Although Max had remained silent throughout everything that had happened, nobody really knew for certain what side that he was on. 

“And besides,” Eric had gone on after he’d said all of that about Max. “I can only tell you who was Jeanine’s spy in Dauntless. I can’t tell you about in Erudite, and forget about Candor.”

But that had been yesterday. Now, the leaders were here, and Tris was starting to question if they’d made the right decision to let the leaders in on what they were going to do.

“Eeh, let them do whatever the fuck they want,” April spoke up sharply, surprising everybody. “If they want to go prancing around in those dirty, old tunnels, I say let them. The city will be able to function without them for a while, especially if they rotate their search in shifts.”

“April, you can’t possibly be serious!” Max snapped at her. “This is complete madness!”

“No! You want to know what madness is? Jeanine putting mind-controlling devices into the blood streams of every Dauntless person– man, woman and child alike– and then using her newly-created army to go on a murder spree and kill a quarter of our city’s population.” The room was deathly silent. “Madness is Evelyn swooping in to save the day from Jeanine’s reign of terror, only to instate her own set of terror upon the city. If Natalie’s gang wants to leave the city to find answers, I say let them.” 

She looked around the room for a long time. Finally, she said, “Help me up, Eric.” Eric rushed over to her side and helped her to get up from her chair. Then, he walked her over to the door. 

“I’m getting much too old for this shit. Next time you decide to have a leadership meeting, invite Ken instead of me. From here on out, I’m retired,” April said before she left the room. Eric came back over to his seat next to Tris.

“Well then,” said Millie, another Candor leader. “I think that April said what’s really on our minds. I honestly don’t care either way if a group of people wants to explore the tunnels, or even if you leave. Right now, I’m more interested in getting back to my life. That is to say, my life before everything went to hell!”

“Here here!” Chad exclaimed. 

“Do whatever the hell you want,” Max said with some irritation. “And in the future, you don’t have to call all of us together just to tell us what you’re going to be doing. Just do it, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the running of the city.” He left the room, too. 

A few other people followed after him.

“I honestly don’t give a damn what they’ve got to say,” Millie spoke up. “I’m interested in hearing about what you find in the tunnels. Yes, I want to get back to my life, but curiosity gets the best of me sometimes.” She hesitated a moment. “Yes, I will admit, I got Erudite on my aptitude test, but I picked Candor because I like to tell things like they are. And right now, after everything that’s come out, I’m not ashamed to say it!”

“Thank you, Millie,” Natalie said with sincerity. “And we will continue to keep those of you who are interested in what we find up to date. I think that we’ll take the rest of the day off, and begin our search first thing tomorrow morning.”

Everybody started to trickle out from the room. Eric looked to Tris. “Well then, you’re now the first leader-in-training,” he said to her.

“It’s hard for me to believe that, after everything that’s happened, life is going on like normal,” Tris said. 

“Well, I’m not sure how initiation is going to go next year,” Eric said after a moment of hesitation. “All I know is that it’s going to be very different than what yours was.”

“Or maybe exactly the same, only with less hiding?” Tris said after she’d given his words some thought. 

“Yes. Exactly like yours,” Eric said. “We’re probably going to teach kids to embrace how they can control the simulations rather than to move around so much to hide their ‘divergence’.” He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “It seems so stupid now that everything’s out in the open.”

 

* * *

“Christina came by yesterday, when I was feeling more up to visitors,” Lynn said to Tris from her hospital bed. “Said that Uriah got the video to play, and that everybody freaked the fuck out. That they went down and killed Jeanine, and then Evelyn and a bunch of Factionless for good measure.”

“Yes,” Tris agreed a bit restlessly. 

“I’m just sorry that I missed it,” Lynn said with a pout. 

“I’m more sorry that you were poisoned, too, and that there was only enough antidote for one of us,” Tris said quietly as she looked down at her hands. 

“I honestly don’t blame Eric at all,” Lynn said, trying to keep the mood light. “I would have done the same thing in his place. He barely knows me, but you’re his girlfriend.”

“He gave me the antidote, but then he also brought me to the hospital,” Tris said. “He should have given me the antidote, and then taken you.”

“Hey hey now, I’m okay,” Lynn said quickly. “Sure, I got knocked onto my back for a few days, but I’m recovering quickly thanks to the medical expertise of all of the doctors here. Christina also said that you might have found a way out of the city.”

“We might have, but we’re going to be looking into it,” Tris said, happy to jump on the change of topic. “We spent the past two days discussing what we’re going to do. A lot of the former divergents wanted to tell the old faction leaders about our plan, but some of them were less than thrilled to be dragged into issues that they find don’t concern them. I feel like we basically just wasted two days doing this, because they don’t care.”

“At least you know where you stand with them now,” Lynn pointed out. “And everything is out in the open now, so it’s not like you have to sneak around anymore.”

“Yes, this is true,” Tris said. She was about to say something else when a nurse bustled into the room. 

“It’s time for her next dose of medication, so you’re going to have to leave now,” the nurse said curtly. 

“Get some rest,” Tris said to Lynn as she stood up from the chair. “I’ll see you maybe in a few days.”

“I hope to be out of the hospital before then, but, we’ll see,” Lynn said with a laugh. The nurse shot Lynn a “Keep dreaming” look. 

Tris left the hospital quickly after that, and went back to the Dauntless compound. As she walked down the steps that would take her further into the familiar building, Tris breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of rock and water from the pit, of sweaty bodies, of gunpowder, of the burgers being grilled for dinner that night. She hadn’t realized how much that she’d missed the smells of Dauntless until she could no longer be around it every day. 

“Hey, how was Lynn?” Eric asked when Tris walked into their new apartment. After everybody had gone back to their former factions, Tris and Eric had decided to get an apartment together. It wasn’t much bigger than Eric’s previous apartment, but there was a second bedroom now. They were thinking of turning it into a library. 

“Doing a lot better,” Tris said with a slight nod of her head. “Frustrated that she’s in the hospital, still. I think that she wants to get out and help us search the tunnels.”

“At least she’s doing okay,” Eric said as he came over and wrapped his arms around Tris. She pressed her face into his chest. “I was super worried about her, but was too afraid to go back to try and help her.”

“She doesn’t blame you for what happened, and said that she would have done the same thing in your situation,” Tris said as she tilted her head back to look up at him. Eric leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. 

“I’m glad that she’s understanding,” he said before he pulled away. “I bought some salmon for dinner tonight. I’m enjoying the new open trade between the factions, although I’m not quite sure if it’ll last.”

“I’ve never had salmon before,” Tris said as she trailed after Eric into the kitchen area. “A lot of that just fell under Abnegation’s ‘no extravagance’ rule.”

“I know, which is why I wanted to cook you up some before relations between the factions closed down again,” Eric said with a huge grin. “It’s practically a staple in Erudite. Fish is considered ‘brain food’, and it’s super healthy for you, too.”

 

* * *

The next morning found Eric and Tris in the former divergent meeting room under the city at the crack of dawn. They hadn’t felt the need to sneak around any longer, so they’d gone down to the old train station to use that entrance instead of the one by the river. 

There were a few people who were considered non-divergent in the meeting room, but most of the people there were from the old group. “Hey, Tris! I was hoping that I’d see you here,” Christina said as she went over to her friend.

“Of course I’d be here; I wouldn’t possibly miss any of this,” Tris said with a slight frown. 

“Alright guys, listen up,” Natalie spoke up as she came into the room. “We’re going to break down into groups of two to four. Each group grab a radio— they’re to be used for an emergency or if you somehow manage to find an exit from the city only.”

“Join you guys?” Uriah asked as he came over to their group.

“Uriah, I hadn’t known that you’d been released from custody yet,” Tris exclaimed when she saw her friend.

“Yeah, last night,” Uriah said with an annoyed huff. It had been much harder to get Uriah freed, because he’d broken into a control room in Erudite in order to air the footage on the USB. 

“Of course you can join us,” Eric said with a big smile on his face. “Wait here, and I’ll go get us a radio.” 

“Were you treated poorly while you were being held?” Christina asked. 

“No, not at all,” Uriah said quickly. “I think that people just didn’t know what to do with me, that’s all. And that’s why I’m not being held anymore, because people didn’t know what to do with me. I broke the law, but it was in order to help get Evelyn removed. And my actions have helped to reinstate the factions, so…” He trailed off and offered an absent shrug. 

Eric came back with a radio, one of the ones that they’d used when Jeanine had been controlling the Dauntless. 

“Okay, now that we’ve gotten that all sorted out, please be patient to wait until I can assign you an area to explore,” Natalie said. 

Large groups of people slowly started to leave the meeting room. “Do you think that we’re honestly going to find a way out from the city?” Christina asked after a moment. 

“Yes,” Tris said. “My mom went out of her way to leave that hidden message in the video. She’s known about the tunnels for a long time, longer than she’d been using them as a meeting space for the divergent. And besides, it’s one thing if the original people in the experiment were brought into the city on a plane, but people would have remembered if a plane had come into the city to drop my mom off. She must have come into the city some other way other than over the fence.”

“I never really gave it much thought before now, but you have a point,” Eric said. “How did they get the original people into the city before the experiment started? Did they have the fence off and open, and then closed it up and turned it on once everybody was inside? Or do you think that they went through the tunnels, because the fence was already in place?”

“I guess that we’ll find out when we talk to the Watchers,” Tris said with a frown just as Natalie gestured for their group to follow her. Their group of four joined six other groups in a hall. 

“I want for you to look through every room,” Natalie said as somebody handed out cans of spray paint to everybody. “Once your group has looked through a room, simply mark an X on the door so that the other groups know that it’s been cleared already. Does everybody have their tablets?”

There were several different words of agreement. 

“Good,” Natalie went on. “We’ve loaded a map of the tunnels into the city-wide system, and it’ll be updated every five minutes as people explore the area. If you come to a part of the tunnels that’s not on the map, add it. Any questions?” She looked around at everybody. “Okay, good luck.”

Tris paused for a moment to slip the can of spray paint into her backpack, which also held her tablet, a flashlight, her lunch, a couple of water bottles, and some snacks. All of the other groups were slowly moving into the different rooms down the hall that Natalie had brought them to, and Eric lead them into the first, unoccupied room. 

 

* * *

The going was slow at first, because all of the groups who’d been told to look down that hall kept getting into each other’s way. But, after a while, the groups had started to spread out a little bit further, and the hall kept branching out. 

“Has anybody been down this way yet?” Christina asked as they started down yet another branched out hall. 

“None of the doors have marks on them, so let’s get started,” Eric said as he moved his flashlight down the row of doors. 

“There’s so many rooms down here,” Christina said as they tried to open the first door, only to find it locked. Eric pulled out his set of lock-picks, which had come in very handy as they encountered more and more locked doors. “What was this area even used for before the city was turned into a giant science experiment?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said as the door opened with a slight click and swung forward. The four of them moved their flashlights over the room, casting long shadows on the far walls. It was filled with dusty, old science equipment. 

For a moment, Tris was brought back to the day that they ran through Erudite HQ in search of the USB, as they ran through all of those labs. Things were destroyed in this room, too, only it looked as though nothing had been touched for a very, very long time. 

“Ugh, let’s go back to those empty rooms,” Christina complained as they started their search of the room for hidden doors or secret passages. “This is like something from a horror movie. When we find a secret passage, I’m afraid that there’s going to be a monster lurking in the shadows.”

“That’s why Natalie didn’t want for us to be alone,” Uriah pointed out. “We’ll be fine so long as we stick together.”

“What time is it anyway?” Tris asked. 

“It’s almost four,” Eric said. 

“Natalie never did tell us when we should go back, did she?” Christina asked.

“No, but I suppose that she might contact us via radio when it’s getting to be pretty late,” Eric pointed out. 

“Good, because I didn’t pack any dinner, and I get sort of crabby when I haven’t eaten,” Christina said with a grin. 

“Let’s go another hour, and then head back,” Eric said. The others agreed, and continued their search of the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Reviews and kudos are appreciated!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finished writing the story yesterday. I would normally post the chapters every couple of days until there weren't any left, but at this point, I'm really fucking sick of this story, and I just want to be completely done with even posting it up right now. So... enjoy the last seven chapters, guys!

As the days went on, the map of the tunnels turned into a real maze. Tris could see how easy that somebody could get lost down there. The further they went, the more locked doors and abandoned science equipment that they found. It only made Tris curious to what the tunnels had originally been used for.

A little before noon on the second day, they found some skeletal remains in one of the rooms. It was pretty much intact, as far as they could tell,and it was hunched over a desk, as if the person had been writing when they’d died. As the four of them got closer to it, they saw a big hole in the skull, like something had blown the person’s brains out with a gun.

“What should we do?” Tris asked. She tried to imagine the kind of life that the person had had before they’d died. What had he been doing down in the tunnels? Had he been a scientist, working on something very important? Why had he been killed? Did he have a family, who’d gone to their own graves, never knowing what had happened to him?

“We should just leave it, search the room, and move on,” Christina said firmly. “It’s not our problem. He’s obviously been here a while, and down here he will remain.”

“It’s not right just to leave him… We might not be able to find out who this guy ever was, but he deserves at least a proper burial,” Tris said firmly. 

“Actually, scientists have ways of looking at skeletal remains and determining who they might have been based off of old medical records,” Eric said. “But with something this old, I’m not sure what they could do. Especially not here, in the city.”

“Hey, speaking of outside the city, do you think that we’re being watched right now?” Christina asked as she moved the beam of her flashlight to the usual areas where the small cameras would be hidden.

“I don’t think that they would have put them down here; the tunnels have only started to be used in the past few years, with Natalie’s group,” Eric said.

“That’s all very well and good, but what should we do about Mr. Bones here?” Uriah said, his eyes still on the skeleton. 

“Let’s call and ask,” Eric said as he pulled the radio off from his belt. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

“It’s Natalie; what’s the situation?”

“It’s Eric,” he said. “We’ve found skeletal remains. Probably from before the experiment was set up.”

“Put a mark on the map, and somebody will come and take care of it,” Natalie said. “It’s not the first one that the groups have stumbled across.”

Tris looked at the tablet that she held in her hands and fiddled with the new map feature that had been added right before they’d started to explore the maze. She saw that somebody had added a “human remains” indicator on the key, so Tris added it to the room as soon as she’d added the room to the map. 

“Okay, this guy is seriously creeping me out, so let’s look the room over and move on already,” Christina said. The others agreed with her quickly and moved on to their task. 

* * *

It was on the fourth day that the radio crackled. Somebody occasionally reported things, but as people got into the swing of the exploration, they had less and less questions. But, when it crackled, the four of them paused to listen.

“We’ve found a door out from the maze,” somebody said, their voice garbled by static, but understandable. “It’s not on the map of known exists into the city.”

“Mark it on the map, put an O on the door, and we’ll look into it,” Natalie said after a while. Even from where she was, Tris could hear the hesitation in her voice. 

The radio went silent. 

“Do you really think that they’ve found an exit from the city?” Tris asked with some hesitation as they returned back to searching the room that they were in. 

“What I’m wondering is: why are we wasting time looking for hidden tunnels and secret doors?” Christina asked. “We’ve been searching rooms for four days now, and even though I haven’t looked over every inch of the new parts of the map, I don’t think that anybody has found anything like that.”

“Yes, but where is the door out from the maze?” Tris pointed out. “We don’t know where they found it.”

“This is true,” Eric said with an absent shrug. “We should reserve judgment until we have more information.”

Christina snorted. “You sound like an Erudite. ‘Don’t pass judgment until we have all of the facts!’.”

“I was in Erudite, so this makes sense,” Eric said. “I’ve been embracing my past a lot more because of the changes to the factions after everything that’s happened.”

“We’re not sure how long that any of this is going to last,” Uriah pointed out.

“Also true, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts,” Eric said with a big grin. “Are we done here?” The others agreed, and left the room. Eric closed the door and Christina drew a big X on the door in green paint. Even in the dark off the hallway, the paint stood out sharply against the white door. 

Eric had just gotten the next door unlocked when the radio on his belt crackled again. “Beatrice? I need you back at the hub,” Natalie said.

Eric handed Tris the radio. “Just me or should the rest of my group come too?”

“The entire group,” she replied without hesitation. 

“We’re on our way,” Tris said. Eric made sure that the door was firmly closed before they turned around and started to head back.

* * *

An hour later, the four of them made it to the meeting room. For the sake of convenience while everybody mapped the maze, it had been dubbed “the hub”. 

Natalie and Andrew sat at the table, along with three people from Dauntless that Tris didn’t know. “These are the people who discovered the unknown exit,” Andrew explained. “We want for the seven of you to look into this.”

“Of course,” Tris said. She wondered why the three of them who’d found it couldn’t have looked into it on their own, but decided not to question the judgment of her parents. 

As the seven of them walked through the halls, they made brief introductions. The three of them were Lucy, Tom, and Marco. They were from Dauntless, and were a few years older than Eric. Of course, the three of them knew Tris and Eric because of the things that they’d done for the city recently. 

“How did you find it?” Eric asked.

“Opened up a door at the end of a hall. It went outside, rather than into another room,” Lucy said simply. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Christina gave an annoyed gesture, but didn’t say anything; she’d said enough earlier. Tris agreed with her friend a little, but they also didn’t know what might be hiding in the maze. Which was why they were doing such an extensive search. 

It took at least another hour for them to get to the hall where the three of them had found the door. It was marked with a purple O, like Natalie had told them to do. 

Tom opened the door and they all blinked a little at the sudden brightness after the gloom of the maze. 

They all exchanged a tentative look before Tris brushed past everybody and stepped outside. The dirt crunched under her feet with every little move that she made. It was like it hadn’t seen any sort of water for a very long time, which was confusing, because it rained plenty in the city. 

Eric followed Tris outside, and then the others came out, too. “Let’s not lose sight of where the entrance back into the maze is,” Eric said. 

“Also, let’s not let the door close,” Marco said. “I know what we probably know how to unlock a closed door by now, but I don’t know what’s out here. We might need to get back inside in a hurry, and we don’t want to mess around with unlocking it again.”

They all exchanged a worried look. “Should we have gotten some weapons?” Lucy finally asked with some hesitation. 

“I’ve got a lighter and a can of spray paint,” Christina said dryly. “Let’s hope that we don’t have to use it.”

“We won’t go too far,” Eric said after a beat. “We don’t have a lot of supplies, and it’s getting late, anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Tom said, and everybody else mumbled their agreements.

“Where is the city in location to this?” Tris asked. “We don’t even know if we really are outside the city anyway. It’s a big place.” 

Eric grabbed the tablet from Tris’s hands, and consulted the map for a moment. “Where are we on the map, anyway?” he asked after a moment. Tom looked over his shoulder to point something out, and then Eric turned around to face the east. “The fence should be that way, so let’s head over there and see what we can see.”

In any direction that they looked in, they saw nothing by dry desert. The door was set into the side of a hill, and after they’d moved away from it, it half vanished. They’d put Lucy’s flashlight in the door to keep it propped open, and they were all glad that they’d done that, or else they might not have been able to find it again. Tris could tell that they were all thinking the same thing about the door, but nobody said anything. 

They all walked in silence for several minutes. Finally, they came to the top of a hill, and they all gasped.

Sparking silver in the dying sunlight, was the fence that outlined the city. However, unlike what they were all used to seeing, the fence now curved away from them. They were outside the city after all. 

“What do we do now?” Tris asked, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of the city from the other side. “Should we go further?”

“Let’s report our findings to Natalie, and ask for further instruction,” Eric said as he grabbed the radio. “Natalie? You there? It’s Eric.”

“I’m here,” she said after a beat.

“We’re looking at the fence to the city… from the outside,” Eric said with some hesitation, as if he honestly couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

A long pause. “What do you see? Aside from the city, I mean,” Natalie asked.

“Nothing as far as the eye can see,” Eric replied as he spun around in place. “The door back into the city is camouflaged, and we’d probably have trouble finding it again if we hadn’t propped it open.”

“How do you feel about it?” Natalie asked after a beat.

“Uneasy,” Eric said with some hesitation. “We don’t have any real weapons, and hardly any supplies.”

“Fall back,” Natalie said at once. “Let’s regroup and head back out tomorrow morning. It’s getting late enough as it is.”

“Roger that,” Eric said. With one last, parting look at the city from the outside, they all turned around to head back to the maze. 

* * *

“Are you sure that you don’t remember anything else?” Eric asked Natalie. 

“No, nothing,” Natalie said with some irritation. “I would have told you if I’d remembered anything more. Just the cypher for the code that I gave at the end of the video. It was probably left in my memories intentionally, but everything else was erased.”

“Maybe we should watch the video again,” Andrew suggested.

“Why? We’ve watched it a million times, and it hasn’t helped shake any more memories loose,” Tris protested. She was sitting in a chair, leaning over the back with a cold compress pressed over her eyes. 

“Yes, but maybe watching it just once more will-” Andrew started, but Natalie cut him off with a gentle hand on his arm. 

“We’re going to have to accept the fact that I’m not going to be of any more use in that regard because my memory was wiped,” she said gently. 

“What are our options here?” Lucy asked. 

“Are you going to keep exploring the maze in the hopes of finding another exit? Maybe one that’s a little bit closer to another civilization?” Millie asked. 

“Yes, I intend to have everybody keep on with the search as planned,” Natalie said. “But I also want for the group of seven who went outside the city to try to go in the opposite direction of the city; to try and see what they can find. But with proper supplies for a long journey.”

Tris sat forward and pulled the compress off from her face. Lucy was sitting across from her, and Tom and Marco were down by the end. Lucy had gone pale, but she was nodding, as if she’d expected this. Tris had been expecting it, too. But she wasn’t quite sure what they expected to find, either. 

Were all of the Watchers dead? Was that why they’d allowed Jeanine’s attack? Because there was literally no one to stop her on the outside? Was the rest of humanity dead as well? Was the little, self-sustaining science experiment gone wrong the only thing that was left of mankind?

But what if the Watchers— and the rest of humanity— were very much still alive and well? What if the Watchers were angry that they’d escaped, and they’d shoot the seven of them on sight?

Tris knew that each scenario was just about as likely as the other. And there was only one way to find out.

Only one way for the city to be able to move on after having that horrible bomb-shell dropped onto them not even a week earlier. 

Sure, things were going back into the way that they had been before everything happened, but there was this lurking feeling. Of something not quite right. And Tris knew that the best way to move forward would be to get some answers. For everybody in the city. 

And the only source of the answers that everybody sought was outside the door that Lucy, Tom, and Marco had found just hours ago. 

The room had fallen silent, all eyes on the seven people who’d just been asked to do this. “It’s the only way,” Tris said quietly. 

* * *

It was a quiet moment, between seemingly endless meetings following their most recent discovery and having to get up in the morning and go out again. Eric and Tris strolled hand-in-hand down the darkened streets. They were in no hurry to get back home, and were just enjoying being in the moment.

“Is it wrong of me to want to go back to simpler times of the looming threat of Jeanine and the overly-present threat of Evelyn?” Tris asked after a while.

“Why?” Eric asked with a thoughtful frown.

“Because I knew perfectly well what to expect from them. Tomorrow, when we leave the city in search of answers, we might as well be walking out from that door blindfolded,” Tris said. “All of my fear from the night before Jeanine attacked seems like nothing in comparison to how I feel about what’s waiting for us outside.”

She bowed her head as tears started to fall from her eyes. Eric let go of her hand only to wrap his arms around her. She pressed herself against him as tightly as she could. After a long while, the front of his shirt became damp, but they still did not move.

“I wish that there were some words that I could say to you right now to help alleviate your fears, Tris,” Eric said as he ran his hand down her hair over and over. “But just like everything else that you’ve overcome recently, I’ll be right at your side the entire time.”

Tris nodded slightly against his chest before she pulled away slightly and tilted her face up. Eric closed the distance between them and offered her a sweet kiss. 

After a long sigh, Tris pulled away from Eric and grabbed his hand again. She kept her head down as they continued on their way. “I’m not being very brave right now,” she whispered after a moment. 

“Sometimes, the bravest thing that a person can do is to admit that they’re afraid,” Eric said. He offered her hand a reassuring squeeze before he brought it up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Tris replied honestly. If there was only one person that she could pick to walk into the unknown with her tomorrow, it would be Eric. Always. 

* * *

Tris’s bag was heavy on her back, filled with food and water to last her a few days, a space blanket in case it got too cold, and some flint to start a fire. It was an unwelcome weight. The only thing that made her feel even a little bit better was the weight of a gun in the waistband of her pants, and the feel of Eric’s hand entwined with hers as they walked through the halls to the door once again. 

The seven of them were silent as they walked. The air was filled with unease, the fear of the unknown. Time seemed to speed up, and before Tris knew it, they were standing before the door marked with the purple O. 

“Here we are, then,” Christina said, breaking the silence as Eric stepped forward, his lock-pick set in hand, ready to unlock the door once more.

The lock clicked open and the door swung open a little bit. Eric straightened up as he put his tools away, and Tom pushed past him to be the first one out. The others followed him outside.

A big truck was waiting for them. Two men were leaning against the front grill, but straightened up as soon as they saw the seven of them walking out from the maze. The men wore desert camouflage jumpsuits with name tags on the breast pockets and some sort of striped insignia on their arms. Both wore mirrored sunglasses, but they pulled them off as they approached the group. 

“Hello, I’m Major Melvin Scoggins, this is Major Ivan Charles,” one of the men started. “We’re here to escort you to the base.” 

“The base? You mean where the Watchers are?” Tris asked with some hesitation. 

“That’s what you’ve been calling them, yes,” Melvin said with a slight nod. 

“We understand that you’ve… expressed a bunch of misgivings as well as fear about what you would find outside of the city,” Ivan started. “We were going to come and pick you up anyway, but now, we feel as if this is a good opportunity for us to have a frank discussion. We mean you no harm.”

The seven of them exchanged a look. “It wouldn’t hurt to hear what they have to say,” Christina said after a beat.

“Yes, but it would mean having to rely upon them for transportation,” Eric pointed out. “We don’t know where the base is.”

“It’s about a mile that-a-way,” Ivan said. “Sorry to eavesdrop, but it felt important that I disclosed this information, since it’s clearly one of your fears at the moment.”

“If it’s so close, then how come we’ve never seen it from the tall buildings before?” Lucy asked.

“You’ll understand once you see the base,” Ivan said with a small smile. The seven of them looked to each other.

“It couldn’t hurt, and the base isn’t all that far,” Tris said. “Let’s go talk with them.”

Melvin opened up a door in the back of the truck, and they piled inside. It was a strange vehicle, with a sandy canvas covering the back, which housed several sideways seats along both sides. Once everybody was in, Melvin closed the back hatch up again, and a moment later, the truck shook a bit as the men got into the truck. It started up with a loud grumble that made a few of them jump a little, and then it started to move.

“I’ve heard about gasoline-run vehicles before, but I’d never thought that I’d see one, let alone get to ride in one,” Eric said as they drove along.

“Is that’s what’s making that horrible noise?” Marco asked. He looked a little green. 

“I believe so, yes,” Eric said. 

Christina gave a snort. “Erudite.”

“Candor,” he replied with a sneer. They all offered each other wane smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes. 

It was only a mile from the city to the base, Tris thought. Only one mile. 

The truck went down a rather steep hill and into the darkness. Electric lights flickered on either side as they drove along— they could see them through the canvas. Finally, the engine turned off and the growling noise stopped. The hatch was opened by a woman dressed in a smart suit. 

“Right this way, please,” she said after everybody had jumped out from the back of the truck. She lead them from the truck and into an elevator, which took them up and up and up. 

After a moment, the back wall of the elevator, which was glass, and only showed a concrete wall, opened up as they passed the underground levels. The elevator was filled with bright light. 

“The base!” Tom gasped. Tris looked, and saw that there was a collection of buildings, but each of them was covered by the same kind of canvas that covered the truck, and the buildings themselves were painted the same, sandy brown as the desert around them. It was just like the door that lead back into the maze, only on a much larger scale.

“Camouflage,” Eric said. “Even if somebody were to stand on the roof of the zip-line building and look over this way, they would only see empty desert.”

“That is exactly why,” the woman said. The elevator kept climbing, until they were higher than any of the buildings that they were looking out over. 

“Okay, but how do people not notice the elevator?” Tris asked, wondering.

“It’s a desert, and this base is some ways away from the tall buildings,” the woman went on. “Even if the sun just happens to hit the elevator, or any of the windows, at the exact right angle for it to be seen from the city… well, this is a desert, after all. You look out over the horizon and you see the heat waves in the distance. It’s only just your imagination. Who’s to say that some glint isn’t just your imagination as well?”

The elevator came to a stop and the door slid open with a faint ding. “This way, please,” the woman said. The elevator opened up onto a giant meeting room that had 360 degree windows. It overlooked the entire base, and had a pretty nice view of the city as well, even if most of the city was, as the woman had explained, some ways away. “There’s coffee, tea, water, various juices, as well as pastries. Please, help yourselves. The general will be in to see you in a few minutes.” She went through a glass door and vanished down some stairs. 

Tom hurried over to the table with all of the food laid out on it and started to pick up as many donuts as he could carry. “Easy there, save some of the rest of us,” Lucy said with a laugh as she joined him. 

Tris was trying to decide between two types of tea when the door opened and a man in a smart uniform came into the room. Following him were Melvin and Ivan, who’d changed into a uniform that was similar to the first man’s, but less showy. There were two other men in uniforms as well, and the woman who’d showed the seven of them into the room. 

“Hello, I’m General Ryan Ivy,” the man in the flashy uniform introduced himself. “I’m the person in charge of this operation. I believe that you’ve already met Majors Scoggins and Charles?” He gestured to Ivan and Melvin, who offered them curt nods. “This is Major Bryan Emond, and Major Jose Hanson. And you are Eric Coulter, Beatrice Prior, Christina Wilkins, Uriah Pedrad, Thomas Delph, Lucy Raphael, and Marco Geraci.” He said all of their names without hesitation. Once finished with the introductions, he gestured to the table. “Please, sit. My assistant, June, will get you anything that you want.”

There was a brief moment when they all went to the table to sit down. It ended up with the seven from the city sitting on one side with the five military men sitting on the other side, facing the others. 

“Now then, let’s get started,” Ryan said. 


	9. Chapter 9

“We’ve known about you observing us for a while now,” Eric started. He was obviously well in his element when dealing with people in charge, especially arrogant people like General Ivy was coming off as. “Jeanine Mathews killed a few people that she believed to be divergent before, so maybe I can understand why you didn’t step in then. But nearly a quarter of our population was killed off by her, and still, you did nothing.”

“Mr. Coulter, there seems to have been a communication error somewhere along the way,” Ryan said with a firm frown. “Just because I’m in charge of operations at the base here, does not mean that I have full power. We all wanted, more than anything, to storm into the city when Ms. Mathews attacked. Fuck, I was ready to go in myself and make some heads roll. But I had an order from the single most powerful man in the world. And he said that he would pull our own funding if we stopped Ms. Mathews.” Ryan looked exceptionally depressed over this. 

“So the reason why you couldn’t help us boils down to money?” Tris asked. She was more than a little angry over the thought of that. 

“I know that you’re angry,” Ryan said to her, and then his eyes went over the rest of the group. “I know that you’re all angry. And if I was in your situation, and I had to sit in some… fancy meeting room and listen to some hot-shot military man tell you all of this, I’d be beyond angry, too. I… I know that this will be of little consolation to you, but we had to sit by and watch everything happen, completely unable to do anything. At least you had some opportunity to stop everything. We couldn’t.”

Tris’s eyes fell down to the surface of the table. Eric reached for her hand and gently squeezed it; he didn’t let go. 

“What we should probably discuss now is how we can help you to move forward,” Ryan went on. 

Tris swallowed hard before she spoke up. “The thing is, the time for helping is now over. Jeanie and Evelyn were killed after the video was played, and a few other people who aligned themselves with the Factionless have been killed in the days since.”

“Natalie spoke to the people after the attack that followed the day after Jeanine and Evelyn were killed, but it’s done little to quell the anger in people’s hearts,” Eric continued. “So many people were affected by what Jeanine, then Evelyn, did, and they find the former Factionless members easy targets now. I doubt that people are going to rest until they’re all dead or in jail.”

“But there’s a growing unrest that worries all of us more than the public lynchings of those aligned with Evelyn and the Factionless,” Tris went on. “And it’s the idea that the entire city is one giant, science experiment turned television show. As I’ve already mentioned, people are angry that you didn’t come in to stop Jeanine from killing nearly a quarter of the population, but also, because nobody signed up or agreed to do any of this. In the first half of the video, Dr. Ritter said that everybody signed consent forms to agree to be in the project. However, all of the current citizens are all too young to have been part of that first group of people. Our oldest citizens are the result of the first generation born in the city.”

“I see,” Ryan said slowly. Then, they all lapsed into silence for several minutes. “Yes, I understand the concerns of the citizens. Before the first volunteers of Project Divided City had their memories wiped, they all completely understood what it was that they were getting themselves into. But, as that generation procreated, and then died out, we never even considered the impact of letting Natalie Wright take that video into the city. Sure, it helped to take down Evelyn and the Factionless, to get the city back onto its original track, but it seems as though it’s stirred up more problems than it’s created. For starters, the president told us that he was angry that he didn’t know what was going on in the underground tunnels. And he’s beyond pissed that you managed to find one of the city exits only after a few days. He’s threatening to cut funding to the city.”

“Is the funding really all that important?” Christina asked with a sneer. “I mean, it’s keeping the lights on in your fancy base here, but you have no direct impact on any of our lives.”

“This is true,” Lucy went on. “The city is completely self-sustaining and self-governing. We somehow managed to survive Jeanine’s attack, and then to overthrow Evelyn on our own. We don’t need you or your fancy money.”

“There is a lot more to what’s going on than what you’re implying, I’m afraid,” Brian said. “You see, the land that the city is on belongs to the government of the United States of America. The president seventy years ago allowed for the land to be used for Project Divided City, and every year that the project has been running, the president signs another agreement to let the land continue to be used by you. If the government were to step out from Project Divided City, for the funding to be pulled, and for the TV show to be canceled, it would be seen as an act of war to have people living on American soil who were not naturalized American citizens.”

The seven of them shared looks of desperation. They couldn’t continue to live on in the city as it was, but according to Major Emond, if the project was canceled, then the government would consider them to be some sort of terrorist or illegal alien, and prosecute them accordingly. Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.

“We understand your concerns, however,” Ryan went on. “I’m going to try and get onto the phone with President Addis and make him understand that you are real people, and he’s been watching your real lives, not some scripted baloney. In the meantime, why don’t you allow June to take you on a tour of the facility? Something tells me that you might be here for a while as we try to get this settled as peacefully as possible.”

It didn’t exactly sound like a request.

* * *

“This base started construction in 2198, five years before the start of Project Divided City,” June informed them as they rode the elevator down to the ground floor. “As you might imagine, doing something like this is not exactly something that one person can just… do on a whim. Somebody didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do this. Science projects like Project Divided City have been going on since the mid-2000’s, however, they did not become televised until nearly a decade later.”

“So the projects weren’t always televised?” Lucy asked. 

“No,” June agreed. “The projects started out mostly for scientific curiosity… To… see what humanity would do when pushed to the brink. We have very little records from those early experiments, only just that the very first experiment, code named Project First City, ended with, not only the mass suicide of every single person who watched the city from the outside, much like we’re doing now at this base.”

“Oh my god,” Christina gasped with horror. 

“Why would they do something like that?” Eric asked. 

“As I said, very little is known about Project First City,” June said. “What little notes that survived were used to start up another project, this time named Project New City. Of course, this was only after Project First City was completely dismantled.”

“Okay, so all of the watchers on Project First City killed themselves, but what happened to all of the citizens inside the city?”

“As best as we can tell, they were extracted from the city. There are no records on what happened to them after the project ended. We all like to think that they went on to lead full, productive lives after that. However, history of ended projects, volunteers returned to their families with very little to no memories of any life outside of whatever project that they were in… histories of suicide… have told us that this was probably not the case. However, we had an incredibly steep learning curve.”

Tris’s breath caught in her throat at June’s words. Many people who had participated in past Projects had killed themselves when their Project had ended and they’d been returned to the “real world”. Since Tris had been born and raised in another one of the Projects, she wasn’t quite sure what life was like out in the “real world”. She knew that her mother knew; she’d spoken very briefly about it, and had painted a very bleak, often times disturbing picture. 

But, the people inside the city right now wanted for the Project part to end. Tris wasn’t quite sure what might happen in the future. Maybe General Ivy would be able to talk sense into the President, as he’d hoped for. Or maybe everybody in the city would be thrust out into the “real world” without ever having been out in it in their entire lives. 

June had said that they’d put all of the people back with their families, but, since the oldest living generation in the city were the offspring of the initial volunteers, there wouldn’t be any surviving family out in the “real world” who’d remember that they were related to the people who lived inside of the city. 

Would the United States government just shove all of the people currently living in the city, who were first, completely unknowing participants, who then transformed into unwilling participants, out onto the streets to fend for themselves if the experiment was shut down? Would the military receive orders to march into the city and kill every man, woman and child? Or was there some third option that Tris couldn’t think of at the moment?

They’d been walking down a hallway that was flooded with mid-day sunlight, but after June pushed open a door, they walked into a room that reminded Tris a lot of the security room in Dauntless.

“This is one of our viewing rooms, one of hundreds that we have on the base,” June explained. “Each person is given four monitors to observe. They flag anything that they think might be worth something to the viewers, as well as the plot that’s been building up.”

“There’s a plot?” Tom asked.

“Of course there’s a plot. We don’t air a show for over seventy years without having any plot!” June said and flashed them a small smile. “And it didn’t become the number one show in the entire world without a plot, either.”

“How many monitors are in here?” Marco asked as he looked around the room. 

“Four hundred,” June said. Four hundred monitors meant one hundred people in the room. 

“And how many of these monitoring rooms do you have?” Lucy went on. 

“Hundreds,” June said. “If you’re really interested, I could get you the exact number. But I don’t know it off the top of my head.”

“No, it’s not that important,” Lucy said with a slight shake of her head. “I’m more interested in just the estimated number.”

“If there’s four hundred monitors in one room…” Uriah started, but then trailed off.

“I know that you have your own monitoring room back in Dauntless, but that is for security,” June said. “Here, we have cameras that cover multiple angles in the same room. Especially if it’s a big room, like the meeting room above the forum, or in the forum itself. We want to be able to see the faces of each of the children as they’re waiting their turn, to close in on their hands as they slice them open to make their selection.” 

There weren’t a lot of television shows in the city that were purely for entertainment. Eric had shown Tris a couple of porn videos that he’d had, but that was also very different than the day-time soap operas that played. But even Tris knew that it was necessary to have so many different camera angles, and to be able to push in on people’s face, to see things like a child slicing the palm of their hand in order to join a faction. 

Of course, it was literally the job of the people who lived on the base to get good camera angles and to understand the significance of the different things that went on in the city in order to know what was important and what would end up being boring filler for the consumers of the show. 

“What are you thinking?” Eric whispered to Tris as they started to leave that room. 

“Those are some of the watchers,” Tris replied. “In my mind, I must have imagined what they’d look like a thousand times or more. But not once, did I ever picture them as being…” She trailed off, unsure of what to say.

“Normal?” Eric provided.

“Yes. They could be people from the city. But they somehow all lucked out; their ancestors didn’t volunteer to be in the experiment. But at the same time, I can’t help but think about what June said. About how all of the watchers from the first experiment like ours killed themselves. Even though we told General Ivy that everybody on the base must be a cold and callous because they sat back and did nothing when we were being slaughtered, I can’t help but wonder if it affected the watchers, too.”

“There is a lot more to PTSD than just being in an incredibly violent attack like you were,” June said as she doubled back to talk with the two of them. “Psychologists have known about the effects of people watching real life horrors, such as Jeanine’s attack on the city. Even though the people at the base have never actually met anybody from the city until today, even though nobody participated in the attacks, and even though everybody went home to their quarters after their shifts were over, a lot of the… watchers-” She said the word with some hesitation. “-now suffer from severe PTSD. 

“But, this is a reason why we employ dozens of psychologists. As I mentioned earlier, people used the mass-suicide of Project First City as a learning experience. The things that people saw happening inside the city were so horrific, that death seemed like the best option to escape from the severe emotional trauma that they were experiencing. After that, the future experiments have always kept psychologists who are experts in dealing with PTSD on staff.”

Tris thought back to the video with Dr. Ritter; she’d said that she’d been a psychologist, and that she’d worked for a previous experiment. It made sense now. 

“In fact,” June went on. “Maybe it would be good if you all spoke with a psychologist during your stay here.” They all exchanged a look. “As I’ve said, they’re all experts in dealing with PTSD. They might help you to work through some of your issues.”

“That sounds wonderful and all, but what we’d really like would be if somebody could come into the city to speak with the people who live there,” Tris said after a beat. 

“I… will… make a note of that, speak with General Ivy, and get back to you on that,” June said with some hesitation. “That doesn’t exactly sound like a bad idea. There is very little mental health care in the city, and that’s even more worrying than anything.” The other all nodded with agreement at that. 

Suicides and homicides in the city were rare, but when they did occur, the usual, underlying cause was normally mental trauma. A lot of those deaths could have been prevented if there were mental health professionals in the city. But there weren’t, and those people kept killing themselves. Or worse: killing other people.

* * *

June took them around the rest of the base. She showed them the mess hall, and some of the quarters where the people who worked on base lived when they weren’t on the clock. 

Some of the people who worked on the base had families, and they all lived in a separate part of the base from the people who were unmarried. There was even a small part of the base that had been turned into a school area for the children. 

“Do you have a high turnover rate here?” Lucy asked as June showed them the school area. “I can’t imagine that many people would want to raise a family here. And even though there are a lot of people living on the base, it’s still a limited pool as far as dating goes.”

“It’s fair enough, I suppose,” June said. “A few people who work here were born and raised on the base, and then started to work when they were old enough to understand. Of course, there is more than just watchers and psychologists on the base here.”

“Yes, all of those military people,” Tris said blankly. 

“The military personnel oversee everybody on the base, make sure that everybody is going to see the psychologists regularly, and enforces the base’s rules,” June said.”And, aside from them, there are tech people, who fix the monitors should they break. Of course, there’s only so much that anybody can do when somebody inside the city finds a camera and destroys it, or they do other things to… disable the cameras.” She glared at both Eric and Tris, who offered her sheepish smiles. 

“We’d been keeping an eye on ERic because, not only was he a spy for Jeanine, but then he also started to hang out with Natalie and her group of ‘divergents’. However, when he started to show an interest in Tris, suddenly… Well, the two of you are the most talked-about couple,” June said with a fond smile. “People don’t even know that the two of you are real people, but you’re more talked about than any celebrity ‘it’ couple ever since the two of you finally kissed.”

“Well, this is one thing that I can get behind,” Lucy said with a smile as she looked between Tris and Eric. Then, she looked back to June. “What about…?” She trailed off.

“We only have so much air time that we’re able to devote to everything,” June said rather dismissively. “We try to get around to everybody, but, as I’ve said, we do actually have a plot. Recently, thanks to Tris’s and Eric’s center role in the ‘divergent army’ as well as everybody in the city putting so much importance on them after Evelyn came into power, we’ve been really focusing on you two. You were, after all, the driving plot. Not to mention the fact that people want to see you two now more than ever.”

“What are you going to do while we’re here, though?” Tris asked.

“We do have cameras here, mainly for security purposes, but I suppose that we’ll use the feeds to document your time here. The quality won’t be the best, but, we’ve got to work with what we’ve got.”

“So, you’re going to have a show about how people find out that they’re on a TV show?” Christina asked. “Very meta.”

“It would be meta if it wasn’t literally happening to us,” Tris said with a roll of her eyes.

“This is also true,” Christina agreed. 

“I can’t think of anything else to show you right now,” June said after a brief pause. “We anticipated having you here for a while, so we had a room set up for you.”

“Are we free to leave?” Tris asked sharply. 

“You are, but it seems as if it would be a lot easier to communicate effectively if you were to remain on the base,” June said carefully.

“You can show us to our rooms,” Eric said.

“Room, just one,” June said. “It’s a communal room; it wasn’t my decision, but if you’d rather that we try to make room somewhere else…?”

“No, that’s fine,” Marco said as he looked around at everybody else. “We’d like a moment to ourselves, if that’s okay?”

“Yes, of course,” June said with a slight nod of her head. She led them through the halls, and then she used a key card to unlock a door. “As you might imagine, we don’t exactly want for you to be wandering around, alone, on the base. You might end up lost, underfoot, and start bothering the people who have work to do. There’s a bathroom that you’ll have to yourselves through the far door over there, and if you need anything, please use the intercom. Somebody will bring you whatever you’d like.”

June left them then, and shut the door behind her. Tom went over and tried to open it after they were sure that she’d gone, but the door was indeed locked, as promised. 

“Anybody else feeling exceptionally creeped out right now?” Uriah asked after a beat, his voice low.

“The fact that somebody is probably watching us, even right now…” Tris said. All of their eyes went up to the ceiling, where there were black domes set into the ceiling at even intervals. 

Once everybody had put their bags down in a cluster on the ground, Eric gestured towards the bathroom, and they silently went into the other room. There were four toilet stalls, and a row of sinks that faced the stalls. But there were still security cameras on the ceiling, although, they wouldn’t be able to see into the toilet stalls because of the plastic partitions. 

They went around a corner and saw four rows of shower stalls, each divided by a wall, and curtains in the front for privacy. There were more cameras in that area, too, but like with the toilet stalls, the curtains and walls provided some measure of privacy. 

The shower stalls were a lot bigger than the toilets were, so Eric twitched open a curtain into one of the stalls and gestured everybody inside. It was a tight fit, but the temporary loss of personal space was a small price to pay for some measure of privacy. 

“Keep your voices down so that they’ll have a harder time listening in,” Eric said, his voice super soft. 

“I’m getting an awful feeling about this,” Tris said, her voice the same volume as Eric’s. “June said that we were free to leave, but I sort of got the feeling that if we tried, they’d stop us.” The others all nodded with agreement at that.

“And also, putting us into one room, and locking the door… for our own protection?” Tom added. 

“Honestly, at the moment, I think that us being together is probably for the best,” Eric said. 

“That’s why I agreed that I had no problem with us sharing a room,” Marco said. 

“Yes, we’ll be able to plan better this way,” Eric went on. “Also, I don’t want for anybody to be alone here. Ever. Use the buddy system. We watch out for one another. Understand?” Everybody nodded again. 

“What are we going to do about everything?” Tris asked. “Word is getting around in the city now about where the entrance is, and, by the sound of things, the door we went through is only just one of many. The rate that we’ve been moving through the maze, it’s probably just a matter of time until some other group stumbles upon another one. If we don’t return, my parents will likely send another group out through the door that we left from. Maybe to try to find out what happened to us, maybe to try to find out the answers that we came out here to find. But either way, with the growing unrest in the city, it’s probably only just a matter of time until other people try to leave the city. For their own reasons, rather than because they’re in search of answers, like us.”

“She’s right,” Eric said with a frown. “People are beyond angry over the reveal of the watchers, and there’s only so much that we could have done in order to try to get things back to normal.”

“We were met outside of that door,” Marco pointed out.

“We did have a meeting before we left with those interested in our goings-on,” Christina reminded him. “On top of the simple fact that they saw us walking around outside yesterday. They knew where we’d be exiting the maze, and who would be coming out. All they had to do was to drive over and wait for us.”

“Exactly how many military people do you think are on the base here?” Uriah asked.

“I have no way of knowing,” Eric said slowly. “There’s so many watchers here, too. A hell of a lot more than I’d ever thought possible. But, you raise a point: are there more military members here who’d risk leaving the base open while the angry citizens of our city decide to make a run for it?”

“And what can we do to help them?” Tris went on.

“At least we’ve still got our radios and our weapons,” Tom pointed out.

“Yes, but for how long?” Lucy reminded them. 

“We might be able to find the switch for the electric fence on the base here,” Tris said with a slight shake of her head. “If we could find it, then we might be able to give people a fighting chance of getting out from the city and away without risk of bodily harm via the military watchers.”

“But look at this place: it’s huge!” Christina said. She tried to make a grand, sweeping gesture with her hand, but accidentally hit Tom in the face. “Whoops, sorry. A switch like that could be literally anywhere.”

“That’s all very well and good for the long term, but what about now? We’re basically prisoners here,” Eric said. 

“Let’s try to get into contact with my parents and then wait to see what General Ivy has to say,” Tris said. 

“That is, of course, assuming that our radios work out here,” Eric said.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to ertuditeprincess1993 for helping me to proofread everything up through this chapter! I really appreciate all that you've done!

They could only hear a lot of static on the radio. Every few seconds, they could hear something that sounded oddly like somebody speaking, but the static was just too loud and covered up whatever the person on the other end was saying. 

“It’s no good,” Christina said with frustration as she smacked the bottom of the radio in some vain attempt that it would start working better. 

“Maybe we could try it again later,” Marco suggested. “Might be less interference.”

“Hey, try going over to the window,” Eric said. They all carried their radios over to the window. 

“Hello? Hello?” Christina spoke into her radio. “Can anybody hear me?”

“Garble-garble speaking,” somebody said. There was still a lot of static, but it was slightly better standing by the window. 

“Hold position inside the city,” Tris spoke into her radio. “Repeat, hold position inside the city.”

“Copy garble-garble back.” 

“Keep repeating the message for a while,” Lucy said as she handed Marco her radio. She went over to her bag and carried it over to a potted plant. 

Tris moved to stand as close to the window as she could and kept repeating the same message over and over in the hopes that the people on the other end would eventually be able to make it out.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tom asked sharply. Tris looked up, startled, and looked over to where everybody was looking at Lucy.

“Hiding a gun in case they decide that we shouldn’t have weapons,” Lucy explained, up to her arms in the dirt of the planter. There was a beat of silence following Lucy’s remark.

“You do realize that they’re probably watching us right now… right?” Tris finally asked her.

“Yes, but honestly, in the long run, what’s more interesting for a television show? A bunch of kids standing around? Or the big-wigs who are having intense conversations with world leaders?” Lucy pointed out. 

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that the watchers aren’t watching us anyway,” Eric reminded her. “They have to watch all of the footage, remember?”

“Yes, but only from the feeds set up in the city,” Lucy said with a roll of her eyes. “We only saw a few of the monitor rooms, but they were all from feeds of the city. June said that it would be a bit of an inconvenience to have to get to the feeds from the security tapes. I doubt that anybody’s watching right now, and if they go back, I doubt that they’ll focus much on what we’re doing in here, aside from things that they need for the plot. And, like I said, I doubt that us standing around here, bored out of our minds would make for good television.”

Tris turned the radio off to save the power and went to sit down on the nearest cot that had been set up for them to use. “What do you think that they’re talking about?” she asked after a moment.

“Knowing what we know now about everything, I imagine that it can’t exactly be good for us,” Christina said with a roll of her eyes as she flopped down on another cot. 

“The fact that General Ivy is on our side is a good sign, I think,” Tom said as he started to pace around the room. 

“I hope that it turns out to be a good thing,” Christina said, her voice muffled by the pillow. “We could use all of the outside help we can get with this.”

The others all knew that this was true, so they didn’t say anything. 

“Okay, so Lucy hid a gun in the planter,” Tris said after a beat of silence. “Where else could we hide weapons?”

* * *

Time passed. There was little to do but to sit around and talk. They tried to talk about simple things, such as the weather, or their families, to keep the watchers from wanting to put them on TV rather than to focus on what General Ivy and the others were doing at the moment. 

Somebody came in to bring them some lunch, and then dinner when it started to get dark. 

“How much longer are we going to be in here? It’s been hours,” Marco complained after the people who’d brought them dinner had left the room. “Exactly how long can two people talk about such a gross violation of basic human rights?”

“I’m surprised that you know that phrase,” Eric said with a smirk.

“Hey hey now, I might not have grown up in Erudite like you did, Mr. Smarty pants, but I grew up in Candor. They train us from a young age to know and respect the laws in the city,” Marco said with a sneer.

“The laws of the city are probably different than out here,” Tris pointed out. Eric nodded slightly at her. 

“She has a point,” he said. 

“I know that they’re probably different, but one would think that basic human rights would apply to everybody, not just the privileged,” Marco said angrily. 

“Calm down,” Lucy said sharply. “We all want the same thing here, so getting angry at Eric isn’t going to help.”

Marco let out a frustrated sigh and buried his face in his hands. “I know,” he moaned, his voice muffled by his hands. “I know. I’m just so fucking frustrated. How long can they possibly keep us here?”

* * *

Evening turned into night with still no word from anybody. The only people that they’d seen after June had locked them in the room were the people who’d brought them lunch and dinner. Nobody had come to clear the dinner dishes away, but they didn’t mind too much. 

Finally, after everybody had decided to call it a night, somebody slipped into the room. They all stared at the young girl with some curiosity, wondering why she’d come into the room. She looked to be around Holly’s age, maybe a year or two younger, and was dressed in a black skirt and blouse, like some sort of a uniform.

The girl motioned for everybody to be quiet, and motioned them into the bathroom. “Sorry to have to approach you under such secrecy,” the girl said. “I’m Ellen, and I’m part of a group who’s on your side to get the government out of your lives like they are. Also, sorry that I couldn’t get to you before now; the base is on high alert after your arrival earlier. Nobody could get into the security control room to shut the cameras off in here. I can’t stay for long, but please know that most of us are on your side.”

“What can you tell us about General Ivy?” Tris asked the young girl urgently. “He told us that he was going to speak with the president, but that was this morning.”

“General Ivy normally has a direct line to the president,” Ellen said slowly as she tapped a finger on her chin. “So unless the president was literally away from his phone all day today, there’s no reason that he wouldn’t have spoken with General Ivy. I don’t know why nobody came to see you. They’re treating you like prisoners.”

“Yes, they are,” Christina agreed with an annoyed frown.

“Is General Ivy somebody that we can trust?” Tris pressed the girl.

“If you ask me, all of the military personnel, you should only trust them as far as you can throw them,” Ellen said with a roll of her eyes. “Think only for yourselves, and for the good of the city. They’re all here for a bigger promotion, even General Ivy. The pay is good, but there’s not much to be done out here besides a lot of paperwork and watching the city. My mom says that Ivy’s head is buried so far up President Addis’s ass, he can eat for the president.” She rolled her eyes.

“But how do we know that we can trust you?” Eric asked.

“You don’t,” Ellen said with a smirk. “Do you honestly think that they’d send somebody in here who’d tell you all of that, but then turn around and go ‘but it’s okay, you can trust me and my group!’ Honestly, how stupid do you think that we are? And we don’t think that you’re stupid, either. Especially not you two.” She pointed at Eric and Tris. 

“What’s our next step, though?” Lucy asked.

“It’s hard to say, but I think that it will depend on what President Addis had to say to Ivy,” Ellen said. “He’ll probably talk to you tomorrow, probably in the morning. After that, I’ll try to come and talk with you again.” She looked at her watch. “Is there anything that you need?”

“No, but thank you,” Tris said. “It’s good to know that we’ve got better friends on the inside than the military, who have locked us up in this room like we’re prisioners.”

“I know. We’re working to get you limited release, but it’s going to take some time.”

“If you can, could you please deliver a message into the maze?” Eric asked. “Just tell them that it’s not safe for them to go outside.”

“I can do that,” Ellen said. She turned and ran from the bathroom. The door opened, and Ellen slipped out quickly. The others looked around at one another before they went back into the shower stall from before. 

“What do you guys think? Can we trust them?” Tris asked instantly, her voice super low. They didn’t know if the cameras had been turned back on or not.

“I trust some little girl a hell of a lot more than a bunch of military men from the get-go,” Christina said with a sneer. The others all nodded in agreement with that.

“After hearing what Ellen had to say, I think that I trust the military men even less now,” Lucy said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They might not have been the ones who originally decided to keep people inside of a cage and watch their every movement, but they’re continuing to keep us in there.”

“Okay, but what do we, right here, do?” Uriah asked.

“Just take Ellen’s advice and wait to hear what General Ivy has to say,” Tris said. “There’s not much else that we can really do at the moment. I hope that Ellen or somebody can get a message into the city to warn them not to come out, though. I’m seriously afraid that we’re locked in here. Now that we’ve seen behind the curtain, they’re reluctant to let us go back to how things used to be.”

“I agree,” Eric said. “We’re just going to have to sit tight and hope for the best right now. However, at least we know that we have allies on the base if we need them. But, let’s hope that we won’t.”

* * *

The next morning, as Ellen had predicted, June came to get them at the crack of dawn. They pulled on their shoes— since they’d slept in their clothes— and followed her to the elevator that took them up to the meeting room at the top of the base. 

Like the day before, a spread of breakfast foods had been laid out on a table. They helped themselves while they waited for the others to arrive.

After a moment, General Ivy swept into the room, followed by the others who’d been present at the meeting yesterday. 

“Thank you for staying the night with us,” Ryan said as he shook Eric’s hand, and then Tris’s. Then, he gestured for everybody to sit down. “As promised, I spoke with President Addis. We had a very long chat about the recent developments inside the city, and I reminded him that you are all very real people. People who might have been born inside the confines of a sociological experiment, but you are still very much real people. People who’ve had their civil rights stomped on.”

Marco leaned forward a little and smirked at the others, but they ignored him. 

“President Addis told me that he had a lot to think about, but he eventually got back to me late last night. He said that he couldn’t, in good conscious, allow people to be in a science experiment without their express consent. Especially the fact that, yes, we have also exploited you for our own entertainment, and we were forbidden to go into the city to stop Jeanine’s genocide. Even if we consider the city to be outside of the bounds of our nation, the fact remains that you are still in our nation, and you are our responsibility. We have let you all down.”

There was a beat of silence. “Where do we go from here?” Tris asked.

“President Addis would like to go in and talk to the city leaders,” Ryan said. Tris shifted in her seat a little, and Eric put a warning hand on the top of her knee to silence her.

Tris felt uncomfortable with the thought of somebody from outside going into the city. Especially somebody who was in a position to damn them all if he felt like it. Not to mention the fact that he’d forgotten the fact that they were all real people. 

“We’d like a moment to talk this over,” Eric said after a moment. “Alone. No cameras.”

“Alright. We’ll give you a few minutes alone,” Ryan said as he stood. The others stood as well and they filed out from the room. 

Once they were alone, they all looked to one another.

“I like the thought of some guy going into the city even less than them keeping us prisoner here,” Tris said sourly. 

“It sounds like this is the one person who can help us out the most, though,” Tom pointed out.

“Yes, but he’s also the person who somehow forgot that we were actually real people, and not just character on a show,” Lucy reminded them. 

“I think that he’s got too much power in this situation, and that’s not okay,” Tris said.

“But what are we supposed to do about that? It sounds like he’s not exactly the kind of person that any of us would want to get on his bad side,” Christina said. 

“There’s not much that we can do about that,” Eric said. “I think that we should agree to meet with him. Here.”

“What about how General Ivy said that the presidents wants to go into the city to talk with the city leaders?” Tris asked.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, but the two of you stopped the people from attacking more Factionless just by showing up at the forum,” Lucy said to both Eric and Tris. “Natalie trusted you enough to specifically ask for you two to be the ones who came out with us. We discovered the door, and the first thing she did?”

“She asked for us,” Tris said slowly. 

“You spoke with the best interests of the entire city when you addressed all of us in the forum, and I think that you will continue to do so with the president,” Lucy went on. 

Tris and Eric exchanged a look for a second. “Yes, okay,” Eric said with some hesitation after a long stretch of silence.

Then Tom, who was sitting on the end, got up and went to go get the others from outside. The military men filed in and took their seats again. 

“What have you decided?” Ryan asked.

“We agree to talk with the president, but we’d like for him to meet us, here, in the base,” Eric said to him. “You might not think that we’re leaders, but after Lucy, Marco, and Tom discovered the door that lead outside, Natalie asked specifically for the four of us to go out with them into the unknown. She trusts us to speak on the behalf of the entire city. Everybody listened to us when we went to the forum following Uriah playing the video. When everybody saw us, they stopped attacking the Factionless.”

Ryan considered them for a long moment. “Yes, alright. I will call President Addis and tell him that he’ll meet with the seven of you.”

“President Addis is already on Air Force One alright,” June said. “ETA in three hours. I’ll message his advisors to inform them of the slight change in plans.”

“Thank you, June,” Ryan said. “Will you give them a crash-course in etiquette for their meeting with the President?” He stood up. “I will see you again when the President has arrived.”

* * *

After the military men left, June sat down and proceeded to give them a very long lecture on the dos and don’ts of talking with the President. Eric and Tris hung onto every word that she said, not only because of their thirst for learning, but also because they were the ones who’d do most of the speaking when President Addis got there. 

June spoke for at least an hour. It seemed like a lot to take in, but the bottom line of everything that she’d said was to just be as polite as possible to the President. 

“If it’s okay, we’d like to see around the base some more, to stretch our legs a bit,” Eric said once June had wrapped up her impromptu presentation. 

“Hm, let me see…” June said as she checked her tablet. “The school is going to be starting an outdoor kickball game. If you’d like, you could join in until President Addis arrives in about two hours.”

“Sounds like fun,” Tom said as he leaned back in his seat and flashed a huge smile. 

“Great. I’ll take you down there.” 

They followed June to the elevator, through the twisting halls, and out onto a green field. The field was something that could be used for literally any sort of outdoor activity. Right now, baseball bases had been set out, and there were already two teams just starting to get into their position. 

“Hello,” June said as she walked out onto the field. “Room for seven more?”

“Of course,” the pitcher on the field said. The two teams quickly divided them up. Tris ended up on the team up to bat first with Christina and Tom, while Eric, Marco, Lucy, and Uriah went onto the field. 

“What did General Ivy have to say?” Ellen asked Tris, Christina, and Tom as they waited for their turn. 

“President Addis is coming here to speak with us,” Tris explained. 

“Holy cow, are you for real?” asked a boy a year or two younger than Ellen. “We’re never important enough for anything.”

“Seriously,” said another girl. “You guys coming here has been the best thing ever.”

“Although, I do wish that it was for better reasons,” Ellen said as she glared at the other kids. 

“Us too,” Christina said sourly. 

* * *

It felt great to be able to run around and to just have fun for once. It reminded Tris of the time that they played paintball when she was an initiate, except that the game of kickball didn’t have the same war-like connotations that paintball did. Nobody seemed overly concerned about keeping score either. The kids just played because they didn’t get a lot of opportunities to get outside and run around in the sunshine. 

They kept playing until June came over and told them that the game was over. The children groaned with disapointment, but started to go inside anyway. 

“Air Force One has just touched down,” June said as she walked the seven from the city back inside. From her lecture earlier, they’d learned that Air Force One was the name of the airplane that the President flew on. It was his to command as he saw fit. “The airstrip is some ways off, and, as usual, his secret service will be here ahead of President Addis to make sure that the base is secured. Only a few people know that President Addis is here, and only a few will ever know of this trip. You have about half an hour to freshen up before he arrives.”

She showed them to their room. 

* * *

Tris regretted having run around so much earlier because now she was all sweaty without anything else to wear. But this was who she was— this was who Dauntless was. All seven of them were from the faction, and if President Addis wanted to talk to them, he’d have to take them as they were— sweat stains and all. 

About forty-five minutes after June had taken them back to their room, she came back for them, and lead them, once again, up to the meeting room. The pastries had been removed and had been replaced with cold cuts, slices of cheese, and crackers. The five military men were already there, and had already helped themselves to some light lunch. 

“Please, help yourselves,” Jose said as he gestured to the spread. “President Addis will be here in a few minutes.” 

They got themselves some lunch, and about fives minutes later, two men dressed in sharp, black suits came into the room.

“These men are President Addis’s secret service,” Ryan explained. “They’re going to make sure that you haven’t brought any weapons in, and that the room is secure.”

While one of the men started to look through the room, the other frisked everybody. 

“All clear,” the one who’d frisked them said into an ear piece. A moment later, June swept into the room from the elevator. More secret service men followed her, and then a man in a blue suit. 

“It’s all very nice to meet you,” President Addis said as he shook each of their hands in turn. “I’m a very big fan of Divided City; I can’t always watch it, but I always try to catch up as best I can. Please, let’s sit down and discuss things.” He gestured to the chairs, and they all sat down. Addis sat between Ryan and Melvin. The secret service men spread out over the room. 

“Alright, talk to me,” Addis said. “I spoke with Ryan for a long time over this issue, but I want to hear this coming from your mouths.”

“We’re more than a little upset to find out that we’re all a part of a scientific experiment that we never had any knowledge of, nor did any of us ever consent to be in the experiment at all,” Eric said.

“The people in the city are angry,” Tris said. “I’m not sure if you’ve seen what’s happened recently, but we found the USB that my mom, Natalie, brought into the city from this base, and Uriah played it. Immediately after it aired, the people who were in the forum for Jeanine’s trial attacked Jeanine, and since they were there, they attacked Evelyn and several Factionless members as well. In all, six people died because of that. Simply from the rage of the people after finding out that Jeanine slaughtered thousands of people because of an experiment in rumor spreading.”

“We managed to calm people down, but the anger is still there. I don’t think that it’ll take much for another incident to spark the public’s rage, though,” Eric said. 

“We all know that we’re part of the experiment now, and things are not going to have a chance to get better— really better— until this entire thing is resolved,” Tris finished. 

Addis nodded for a moment after they’d finished speaking. “I understand that you’re angry. I try to put myself into your position, and I think that I’d feel the same way. I’m not quite sure how much that they’ve told you about the background information of the city, of the legal steps that were taken in order to get the experiment off the ground. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s exceptionally complicated here.”

“I think June did mention something about laws and citizenship and such,” Eric said with a thoughtful frown.

Addis nodded with agreement. “Since the experiment exists completely outside of the rest of the functioning United States of America, it’s technically considered to be its own nation. But, that nation exists within the bounds of the United States of America, and only be my agreement— and the agreements of my predecessors— is it allowed to continue to exist without being shut down by the other branches of the government.”

“Okay, maybe I’m missing the point here, but why can’t you just take the city and turn it back into a regular city in your nation instead of it being independent?” Tris asked with a frown. 

“It’s not as easy as just declaring that Divided City is now part of Illinois again,” Addis said quickly. “It’s also about including the city into the metaphorical gears of the rest of the nation— and the world. We’d have to get all of the citizens into the social security system, start up a currency flow, get a proper education system…”

Eric and Tris exchanged a brief look. “We’d be willing to do just about anything. We just don’t want to be part of an experiment and to have our every movement recorded without our permission,” Tris finally said. 

“And especially not to have our lives broadcast to the entire world,” Christina said with a frown.

“Yes, of course,” Addis said. “We were all very excited that this experiment managed to survive and to become a multi-generational thing that we failed to consider the rights of the children who were born inside the experiment. It’s never happened before. However, this is a gross oversight on all of our parts. I know that the words that I say to you now, after you’ve been subjected to the horrors that you have been, mean little. However, as soon as word starts to get out that the experiment was very real, that the horrors that everybody saw where not made possible because of the magic of Hollywood, but instead, were very real, all hell is going to break lose. People will start to exclaim about your basic human rights being denied, that we all knew that Ms. Mathews was planning something, but we all sat back and, not only did nothing, but those of us in the know ordered for the military to stand down rather than to help you.”

Tris felt that he was right, because she did not feel better by his words. And, the longer he spoke, the angrier she became all over again. These people were vile, viler than Jeanine and Evelyn with her Factionless times ten. 

And, it sounded like President Addis was trying to cover his own massive ass from the negative back-lash that this would cause than to make sure that the people in the city were safe and well. Tris would only believe his words when they actually came true. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and everything until the end haven't been proofread. If you spot any errors, please let me know so that I might fix them!

The meeting seemed to drag on and on, but finally, the group of seven were escorted back to their room, where dinner was waiting for them. 

“I feel so gross and sick to my stomach from Addis,” Lucy said as she flopped down onto her cot. “I don’t know how they can possibly expect for us to be able to eat.”

Eric coughed into his hand and motioned up at the ceiling, where all of the cameras were. Lucy rolled her eyes, but remained silent after that. Tris was in agreement with Lucy, too, and she couldn’t eat much. 

“Are you okay, Tris?” Eric asked after a while. “You’ve barely touched your food.” Tris looked over to him, and saw that his plate was mostly untouched as well.

“I could say the same thing,” she said. She tried to make it sound rather coy and to offer him a smile, but the words sounded flat to her ears, and the smile refused to come. 

Eric looked over to where Lucy was sitting on her cot, with Thomas and Marco sitting on either side of her. Marco was pulling on one side of Lucy’s mouth with his finger to get her to smile, while Thomas was trying to sculpt a mashed potato man using the peas and a carrot for decoration. Despite the goofy way that both men were acting, their faces betrayed the unease in them. 

Tris angrily dropped her plate down onto the floor and stood. “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced to everybody. Nobody responded, but Tris wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected for them to say. 

But as Tris stood under the scalding water, her thoughts kept drifting back to what Addis had said to them. Her stomach rolled into knots at his words, and Tris felt the sting of tears in her eyes. She leaned against the shower wall and roughly bit her knuckle to keep from making a sound as the tears finally came free. 

Things were bad. Addis said a lot of stuff about wanting to help the people in the city, but he’d never said anything about actually moving forward with his talk. In fact, aside from what the people from inside the city had said, nobody had said anything at all about an actual plan of helping the citizens inside the project. 

Project Divided City was too big of a deal for them to want to end the project, no matter how many people ended up dead, or might in the future. Things had calmed down considerably since Jeanine and Evelyn had been killed, but everybody’s emotions were simmering. They only just needed just a single spark to send them into the blind rage that had ended in the deaths of Jeanie and Evelyn. 

The military had been ordered to stand down rather than to rush in and help stop Jeanine. And now, Addis wasn’t going to help them at all. Those were things that weren’t going to make the people happy, and Tris was worried about what might happen once word got back to everybody in the city about the most recent developments. 

Tris lost all sense of time as she stayed under the hot spray of the shower until she heard Eric’s voice outside of the shower stall. “Tris? Are you okay?”

Tris quickly rubbed the moisture from her eyes and turned the water off. Then, she went out from the actual shower stall, and into the front part, where people could undress, dry off, and redress in privacy. She poked her head out from behind the first curtain. 

“Honestly, no,” Tris told him. Eric closed the distance between them and gently cupped Tris’s face. Tris let the curtain fall away when he came up to her. Eric’s thumbs stroked under her eyes, wiping away the lingering moisture there. 

Tris expected for him to offer some words of encouragement, but he remained silent and only offered her a grim look. Tris lowered her eyes and ducked back behind the curtain to dry off and get dressed. 

Eric came into the stall just as Tris had put her bra back on. He cupped her face and kissed her tenderly. “I feel like it’s been forever since we were last intimate,” he whispered against her lips. 

“It has,” Tris said slowly. “But not right now.” She gently pushed him away, and he willingly stepped away from her. “I’m too upset right now. And besides, not like you had any forethought to bring… things that we’d need.”

“No, but it’s not like that’s the only thing that we could do,” Eric said. “But I get it; we’re both upset over everything right now.” He heaved a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “What are we going to do about this? Addis is clearly not going to help us.”

“I wish that we could talk to Ellen again,” Tris said as she pulled her pants on. “And all of the people she said were on our side. We might be at a loss for what to do right now, but they’ve been staring at our problem for a lot longer than we have. They might have some more ideas. Ideas that might actually work.”

“Yes, but how do you propose that we actually talk to her?”

“Well, we did talk to her a bit earlier, while we were waiting for our turn to kick,” Tris said slowly. “We told her about our meeting with President Addis. So it’s likely that she’s already told everybody else about it… Well, everybody of value, at any rate.”

“Okay, so we probably just have to wait until they come to us. And hope that they don’t take too long.”

“We’re constantly being watched, so obviously, they have to be super patient in order to get even a message to us,” Tris pointed out. 

“Yes, you’re right,” Eric said. He closed the distance between them again and gently kissed her forehead. “I-”

“Hey, you guys had better not be banging in there!” Christina exclaimed loudly. Tris ripped open the curtain and glared at her friend. “Oh god, my eyes!” Christina threw her hand up to shield her eyes.

“No, we are not,” Tris said sourly. 

“Good,” Christina said. She lowered her hand and forced a laugh. But it sounded wooden and awkward. She fell silent quickly. “We’re all eager to get to sleep, but you two are holding up the show now!” 

When Tris went back into the other room, she was surprised at how late that it had gotten. It was now completely dark outside. She got into her bed and pulled the blankets up over her nose. 

“Night,” Eric whispered in the cot next to hers. He reached out and gently bumped her shoulder through the blankets. They’d pulled their cots together, but it was difficult for them to share one cot because of how flimsy that they were. At least this way, it was almost as if they were sharing a bed. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Tris replied. She rolled over and tried to get to sleep. 

* * *

Tris was having a strange dream where she was being chased by a half-man, half-bird who was draped in a red and white striped flag. Then the lights flipped on and she woke up. 

“Huh? What’s going on?” Uriah asked sleepily from his cot. 

“Get up, and hurry! We don’t have much time!” Ellen hissed from the door. Once everybody realized who had awoken them, they all shot out of bed, grabbed their shoes, and hurried after Ellen as fast as they could. 

“They recycled the power for the monitoring room that’s been keeping an eye on this room, and then hacked it so that once the computers are back up, they’ll only just see recycled feeds of you guys asleep. They won’t notice that you’re gone,” Ellen explained as they raced through the halls. 

“I’m super glad to see you,” Tris said as they walked along. 

“I’m glad,” Ellen said and flashed her a cheeky grin. “After all, when you told me about what you guys were going to be doing… How could I resist not telling literally everybody else?”

“Your plan is great and everything, but won’t others notice that we’re just walking around?” Eric asked.

“Nah. At night, there’s only just a skeleton crew on, in case stuff happens in the city in the middle of the night. But with our two stars right here…” Ellen gestured to Eric and Tris. “Obviously, they’re not too interested if John and Shelly bang each other tonight, or if Mary goes to continue her affair with a married man.” She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “The plot’s with you, and, according to the video feeds, you’re all fast asleep. Before you came to the base, nobody had any reason to watch the base’s security cameras. As soon as we get to where we’re going, there won’t any cameras there anyway, so we’ll be okay.”

Ellen led them through the corridors, and down into a basement area that hadn’t been part of the tour that June had given them the day that they’d arrived. The spaces down here were much like the living quarters above, however, things looked a lot worse. The paint was peeling, the door frames were cracked, and everything just needed to be cleaned. Even a lot of the lights down here needed to be replaced. One kept flickering, casting an odd atmosphere over the already super-jumpy group.

Finally, Ellen knocked three times on door number “17”, and a woman opened it a crack, and peered out at them. “Come in, quickly,” the woman said, and gestured everybody inside. 

The room was not meant to have so many people in it at once. There were two twin beds, a single nightstand with a lamp between the beds, and a small dresser with a mirror on top of it pushed u against the wall with the door in it. Aside from the woman who’d opened the door, there was another woman and two men. 

“Please, come in,” the second woman said. “I know that it’s a tight fit, but it’s the only place where we’ll be guaranteed a little bit of privacy.”

“So introductions,” one of the men said. “I’m Joe and that’s is Matt. Shirley let you into the room and this is Maggie.”

“Why is it that you’re helping us?” Tris asked, her eyes narrowed slightly as she considered the four adults. 

“For a lot of different reasons, but the main one being that it’s inhumane for the government to keep doing these things to you,” Shirley said with a frown. 

“Don’t forget about how cruelly that people treat us here,” Matt went on. 

“What do you mean?” Christina asked.

“Look at this room,” Shirley said as she made a gesture to indicate the tiny room. “I was born and raised here on the base. I’ve spent my entire life working for this project, but this is the thanks that I get? A tiny room, barely enough money to buy the things that I need to live… I have to live with Maggie. We don’t even have a bathroom for ourselves. All because the people who run this project consider us to be second-class citizen. Our parents mopped the floor, took out the trash, and generally just cleaned up after everybody on the base. But because of that, we’re treated like we are the garbage that we take out.”

“And while we know that toppling this one project isn’t exactly going to make our lives any better,” Maggie went on. “After all, at least we have jobs right now, even if they’re shitty jobs. But if the project comes to an end, we won’t even have that.”

“But we’ll know that we did the right thing,” Matt finished. “And in the end, that’s a hell of a lot better than any sort of long-term benefits from working at the base.” The others nodded in agreement. 

“We may not be able to help ourselves much, but the least we could do would be to try and help you guys,” Joe said. 

“Ellen told us that you said to her that you had a meeting with President Addis today?” Maggie asked. 

“We did,” Tris said. Then, the seven of them launched into an explanation of what had happened during their meeting with President Addis. 

“This is horribly typical,” Matt said with a frown once they’d finished. “Addis and the government are little but puppets. You take them away from the puppet master, and they turn into slobbering fools.”

“Who controls them?” Eric asked. 

“The billionaires of the country,” Maggie said. 

“Once upon a time, our country used to be known as the ‘Land of the Free’. However, as time went on, it became the home of the capitalist pigs. Things started to get worse and worse. Now, we can’t even pretend to call ourselves a democracy or anything. Nobody voted for Addis; the ‘puppet masters’ decided that he had the prettiest face and nicest public speaking voice and decided to put him onto the throne for the next couple of years,” Shirley explained to them. 

“So Addis coming here was just in an effort to try and sooth us?” Eric asked with annoyance. “They’re the parents, patting their scared children on the head? ‘Shhh, it’s okay. If you go back to bed, then everything will be okay.’” He patted the air in front of him as if he was patting the head of a child. 

“That’s one way to put it, I suppose,” Joe said as he tapped his chin thoughtfully. “They’ll keep telling you that they’re going to shut down the project… You’ll get tired of waiting around the base and go back inside the city again. Then there’ll be occasional messages from the government that’ll basically say that they haven’t forgotten about your complaints. But the messages will become fewer and farther between until they finally stop. Of course, by then, you’ll all probably have children of your own… You’ll have settled back into your life in the city.”

“So what do you propose that we do?” Tris asked with some horror. 

“Under no circumstances should you let anybody think that you’re just going to slip back into the city without raising a big stink,” Ellen spoke up. “I also think that if the government isn’t going to do anything to help you, you should just evacuate the city. There’s a lot of people in there, and there’s got to be more than just the one exit that you found. The military people in the base won’t be able to stop all of you if you decided to leave.”

They were all silent for a moment as they pondered her words. Finally, Tris said, “General Ivy said that he’s on our side, but President Addis said the same thing. Do you think that we can trust them? I mean, if we run, how many of us do you think that they’ll kill before we can get to safety?”

“A lot,” Maggie said without hesitation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, but there’s not exactly a lot around here.”

“She has a point,” Joe said softly. “If you try to run, none of you will make it. The military has jeeps and long-range weapons. They’ll kill some of you as a message, round you all up, and put you back into the city. But then, they’ll collapse parts of the tunnels, so that you won’t be able to get out again.”

“Surely there’s some other way out from the city,” Tris said. “Before Jeanine was killed, I was contemplating the electric fence. Surely the power supply for it is here, on the base, since it’s nowhere inside the city.”

“Yes. The only thing that the base supplies power for in the city is for the electric fence,” Shirley said slowly. “Everything else, and you guys supply your own. It was an agreement when the project first got started that the city needed to be self-sufficient. After all, it would ruin part of the experiment if we had to drop supplies in or whatever.”

“I know where the control for the fence is,” Ellen said. “But they have guards around it 24/7.”

“Guess that it’s occurred to them that some of us are sympathetic to you guys. That we might want to shut down the power for the fence,” Maggie said with a sneer.

“But I thought that we’d been keeping things quiet, and out of earshot of those wanting the project to go on?” Ellen asked as she looked around at the adults from the base.

“She didn’t mean that they’d caught onto our whispered meetings,” Matt said to her. “More like they thought that somebody might want to do something like that.”

“Oh, I understand,” Ellen said after a moment.

“But what are we going to do? Take down the guards, shut off the power for the fence and hope that the people in the city can cut a big enough hole in the fence in order for people to get out before all of the military people here wrestle control back and turn the power back on?” Tris asked after a beat of silence.

“That sounds like it would require a lot more forethought than just doing it,” Eric said. “People to be standing by inside the city, with wire cutters and such. Of course, that’s also assuming that the military doesn’t roll out at once and try to stop the people from leaving the city. Again, we’re going back to what we talked about earlier: us on foot versus them with their jeeps.”

“But what if they cut a hole big enough to fit some cars through?” Tris asked. “Then more people would be able to get away, much faster.”

“Let’s shelve that idea, and label it as Plan B or C,” Maggie said quickly, interrupting whatever Eric had been about to say. “Especially since it would put those of us in the base at risk. If the military here saw us guarding the switch for the fence, they’d probably capture us, and start… lord, I don’t even want to think about it, but I think that those who grew up here know that they’d torture us for information. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d crack in a second. I can’t handle pain at all.”

“We might be able to drum up more people who are sympathetic to our cause, but in the end, it’d still be us versus the military,” Shirley went on. “Men with guns versus those without it.”

“We have some weapons, but not nearly enough in order to give you guys a fighting chance,” Eric said. “And that still leaves the question of how we’d get a message to the people inside the city.”

“We tried to radio my parents the other day, but there seemed to be nothing but static,” Tris said. “We’re not even sure if they heard our message or not.”

“Ignoring the idea of communicating with the people in the city for a moment, one thought has occurred to me about our plan B: everybody but a skeleton crew could leave the base in order for the military to not harm them,” Christina said after a moment. “But then it seems to me that it would defeat the part of the revolution, in two different ways: The first being that people might get suspicious if a lot of people suddenly left the base. The second is that there wouldn’t be enough people left on the base who would want to fight for the rights of those inside the city.”

“I’m certain that there are people who aren’t associated with the base who haven’t forgotten that Project Divided City is more than just entertainment,” Shirley said quietly. “Does anybody have any ideas how we could exploit that in order to solve things here?” Everybody looked over to her. 

“That does bring up an interesting idea,” Matt said slowly. “If the public were to turn against Project Divided City, then the government would have to shut it down.”

“But you’re completely forgetting all about the statistics!” Joe argued. “Project Divided City is one of the most best-watched shows in history of television. Millions of people tune in to watch it, they watch reruns on television, and the viewership is even high online.”

“I’m with Shirley,” Maggie said. “People have got to remember that Project Divided City is a sociological experiment, and not Hollywood.”

“What would you propose that they do, though?” Joe snapped at her. “The military might have been ordered to stand down when Jeanine was attacking everybody, and then when Evelyn stormed in and took command of the city, but now that the seven of them have seen the Wizard, as it was, things are a hell of a lot different. Everything has changed now. They’re not just going to let them go back.”

“What do you mean?” Tris asked quickly. 

“Did we sign our death warrants as soon as we left the tunnels?” Eric asked sharply.

“I’m not exactly saying that,” Joe said carefully after he’d given his words some thought. “As I said earlier, they’ll keep you waiting here until you finally get fed up of putting your lives—your real lives—on hold. You’ll go back into the city, and they’ll just hope that you’ll keep waiting for things to change.”

“So we could just go back into the city and tell people to start screaming into all of the cameras that we can find that none of this is a Hollywood program, and that we’re being kept inside the city?” Uriah asked.

“That is the absolute last thing that you should do,” Joe told them sharply. “As I was trying to say a moment ago, now that you’ve peeked behind the curtain, the military won’t hesitate to storm into the city and make examples out of all of you.”

“Even if we would be willing to martyr ourselves, by the time that the military had gotten into the city, we would have already told enough people that it won’t matter if they kill us or not,” Tom said slowly. 

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to fucking die for this cause,” Lucy told him sharply. “Not like that.”

“I don’t want to die, either, and I don’t trust the military to not just barge in and start killing everybody,” Tris said.

“I agree. I have a feeling that the military will take a page from Jeanine’s book and just start killing everybody. Then, once the survivors have been cowed, they’ll tell them that if they want to live, they have to 1) forget that they’re part of a social project that’s being filmed, and 2) pretend like none of the past few months never happened at all,” Eric said with a sneer. 

“That’ll be fine, and I’m certain that the remaining people that they decide not to kill would quietly go back to their lives for fear of being killed…” Matt said.

“But…?” Maggie prompted him slowly. 

“But they won’t forget. They’ll start to meet in the dead of night, much like the divergent did,” Matt finished. 

“Hey…” Eric said as he started to snap his fingers. “Hey! That brings up an interesting idea! Remember those devices that I made that stopped anything electrical from working?”

“Hey, yeah!” Tris said. “I honestly forgot about those things. After Jeanine attacked, being watched seemed such a tiny thing in comparison to not dying.”

She looked around at everybody else. Those from the base seemed to know exactly what Eric was talking about, but everybody else just looked confused. 

“What?” Christina finally asked. 

“If we could shut off all of the cameras in the city, then there wouldn’t be anything that they could do,” Tris said, catching on to the idea that Eric had had. “We already destroyed a bunch of cameras, so who’s to say that something completely innocent didn’t happen to all of the cameras?”

“Of course, it wouldn’t be all at once, since I’d have to make more devices. So they’d think that it was more innocent than it actually was,” Eric said.

“Okay, that might help people feel better because we won’t be watched all of the time, without any of our permission. But, how will that help us to not feel so trapped inside the city?” Marco asked. 

“We will have to do something about the people on the base who are insistent that we remain inside the project,” Tris said. “They might try to sneak into the city and destroy the devices, once they figure out what we’ve done.”

“So no matter what we do, we just keep coming back to the problem of the military against us,” Eric said with an annoyed frown. 

“I feel like we’ve been here for a while now, but we’re just talking around in circles,” Lucy said as she massaged her temples. “And while this is slightly better than our conversation with President Addis and General Ivy, we’re getting nowhere.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, it’s late, and we’ve had a lot thrown at us today,” Tris said. “I propose that we go back to bed, and think things through for a few hours.”

“Are you going to see President Addis again or will he leave soon? If he hasn’t already?” Ellen asked.

“I’m not sure,” Christina said with a confused look on her face. 

“Cause I’ve got an idea,” Ellen said slowly. 

“Oh no, what are you planning, Elle?” Matt asked her sharply. 

“I’m just going to use the gossip in the base against the military and President Addis,” she said with a huge, evil grin. 

“I should let you start to spread that around, then,” Maggie said as she stood up. “I’ll take you lot back to your room, and Matt can go tell them to recycle the power to the computers again, while turning off the programed feed.”

* * *

Tris’s mind churned over everything that they’d discussed in the late-night meeting, even long after Maggie had delivered them back to their room. 

She didn’t get any more sleep that night, but she knew that a little bit of lost sleep was a small price to pay for figuring a way out of the increasingly shitty situation that they found themselves in. However, she wasn’t any closer on figuring out a solution on her own. 


	12. Chapter 12

President Addis left the morning after his meeting with the seven from the city without so much as a goodbye to the group. Tris felt as if she should be a little upset over that fact, but she tried not to let it get to her. As those from the base had explained, he was nothing but a puppet. He was stupid, and only ever acted on orders from his puppet masters. 

That day had been over two weeks ago. Even though the people in the base kept telling their seven visitors from the city that things were in progress, they all knew that this was just lies. As the others had warned them, the plan was clearly to make the seven of them wait so long that they wanted to go back into the city on their own. 

“We’ve been here for two weeks,” Lucy finally said in the middle of the night. 

They knew that there was a skeleton crew watching them at night. If they didn’t get out of bed, and if they didn’t raise their voices too much, then the crews wouldn’t have any reason to think that anything was happening besides the seven of them sleeping. 

“Exactly how long are we expected to put our lives on hold?” she went on. 

“If we can get out from under the gaze of a government that is not our own, then our lives would be given a chance to really begin,” Eric pointed out. 

“Maybe one of us should go back to the city to get some others to come with us,” Tris said slowly. 

“We could consider that, but at the same time, doing something violent like the others suggested is starting to sound better and better,” Christina said bitterly. “They’ve done nothing but cause us pain after pain. And they’re not even sorry! I say let’s cause them some pain of our own design!”

“I didn’t like the thought of what we might be up against when the idea first came up during our meeting with the others, but now I’m not so sure,” Lucy said slowly. 

“What should we do?” Tris asked. 

“Let’s talk with Ellen again,” Tom said. “At least hear if they’ve somehow managed to come up with a better idea since we last talked.”

“Something tells me no, but you never know,” Marco said bitterly. 

* * *

In the time since President Addis had left the base, the seven of them had gotten slightly more freedom to roam the base. So Tris had been elected to track down their young friend and ally in order to discuss with her their next move.

Tris found Ellen in the library after lunch, with some of Ellen’s peers. In a normal society, the kids probably wouldn’t have had much in common, but on the base, the kids all stuck together for a lack of any better friends. 

“Hey, Tris,” Ellen said with a huge smile. “We were just talking about you.”

“Good things, I hope,” Tris said with a small smile. One of the other kids, Taylor, pulled an empty chair out and gestured for Tris to sit. 

“Nothing but the best!” Ellen said with a bright smile as Tris sat down in the offered seat. 

“I wanted to come and hopefully continue our previous conversation,” Tris went on with some hesitation. 

“Of course,” Ellen said. Her smile faded a bit. “We’ve given what you said a lot of thought, and I’m sure that you have, too. Especially as the things that we said would happen have happened. Of course, it’s only been a fortnight, but my point still stands.” She gestured around at the others seated at the table as well. “They all know what’s happening, and they want to help, too.”

“Really? There’s so many of you,” Tris said. She felt overwhelmed and grateful at all once. 

“It’s not just the adults that the regiment here on the base effects, you know,” Taylor said with an annoyed scowl. “The children are subject to even worse treatment. Unlike our parents, we can’t leave the base whenever we’d like. We’re helpless, stuck here until we turn sixteen.”

“So it’s not just our parents that stand to benefit from things,” a boy named Roger said. Tris nodded with understanding. 

“I know what it feels like to be trapped by laws that are overly stifling. Except that we’re given at least the illusion of choice,” Tris said. “But with you, your choice is either that you remain with your family, or you never see them again. Period.”

“Okay, this conversation is both interesting yet depressing, and gets us nowhere,” said Ellen. “We need to figure out how we can help those inside the city.”

“We’re all getting very frustrated, and we’re beyond angry right now,” Tris said, her voice low. “We’re starting to think that violence might be prudent.”

“It would certainly grab their attention,” Roger said with a snort, and some of the others nodded with agreement. 

“Sometimes, I think that it’s the only language that the government understands,” Taylor said with a sneer.

“We’ve been in more than enough wars, that’s for sure,” Brandy agreed. 

“There’s really only two languages that the government understands: violence and money. Since we don’t have money, then we’ll try to physically hurt them instead,” Ellen said. 

“How far is your group willing to go?” Taylor asked Tris. 

“We’ve already suffered so needlessly all because of them,” Tris said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know about the others, but I know that I’m ready to kill somebody so long as it’ll get some attention.”

“Then I have an idea,” Taylor said. Her voice was flat, but a demented smile spread across her face. The others looked at their friend passively. Tris felt a wave of sheer terror wash over her, and was only just grateful that Taylor was on her side. “I think that we have the things that you might need on the base, but a lot of my plan rides on Eric’s Erudite training.”

“What do you need him to do?” Tris asked.

Instead of a verbal reply, Taylor reached into her bag, ripped out a sheet of paper from a notebook, and drew a simple map on it. Then, she passed it across the table to Tris. 

“Bring him to this room at midnight,” Taylor said. She tapped a room on the map that she’d marked with a big X. “If you’re caught, just start making out or whatever. It’ll be more difficult to bring the others.”

Tris studied the map, and realized that Taylor wanted for her to bring Eric to one of the big science labs. They were set up like the labs had been in Erudite, but the group had never been allowed access to them. She didn’t know what they did in there, or why. But she knew that whatever Taylor’s plan was, Eric would jump at the chance to make something. 

“We’ll be there,” Tris said as she looked at the younger girl. 

* * *

It hadn’t been too hard to convince Eric that they needed to go to the lab, but it had been a struggle to convince the others that they couldn’t come this time. 

“But why? I know that Christina and Uriah aren’t exactly scientifically minded, but none of us aren’t idiots,” Lucy said. She was trying hard to keep the whine from her voice. “We could help.”

“It’d be easier for everybody in the case that we’re caught,” Tris said. “Eric and I would start making out, acting as if the only reason why we left our room was to have some… alone time.”

“And we couldn’t do that, too?” Marco asked as he draped his arm over Lucy’s shoulders. Not for the first time, Tris wondered if they were in a relationship, but she also wondered what part in the relationship that Tom played. 

Not like it mattered, Tris thought briefly. 

“Yes, but it would be weird if there were multiple couples there at the same time,” Tris said. 

“She does have a bit of a point,” Tom said. “Although, we could probably go around a different way.

“I would normally say yes, but the watchers might find it odd if multiple couples left the room at the same time for the same reason,” Eric said. “Sorry. We’ll find out what Taylor wants for me to build, and maybe we can find something for you to do down the road.”

“Best to leave the sciencing to the scientist,” Tom said to Lucy. She pouted, but agreed to this.

“So long as you don’t leave me out of the plans,” she said as she got up. She left the room. 

“She’ll forgive you by the morning; she just hates being left out of things,” Marco said. 

* * *

After dinner, Tris and Eric went to bed with the others as normal, but thoughts of sleep were the last things on their mind. 

Finally, Eric leaned over Tris and kissed her soundly. “Let’s go someplace private,” he whispered into her ear. It was purely for the benefit of the camera crew. They knew that they would be followed, but they didn’t really mind so much. 

The two of them slipped from the room and made their way down the halls quickly, hand-in-hand. They acted like they didn’t really know where they were going, but didn’t run into any problems. 

“In here,” Tris said as she pushed open the door to the lab that Taylor had wanted them to come to. It was dark inside, but as soon as the door had closed after them, the lights flipped on. 

Taylor stood by a table with a variety of things laid out on it. “Ellen’s taken care of the cameras in this room, so don’t worry,” she explained. 

Eric walked over to the table, and looked down at the things that had been laid out. He looked back up at Taylor with a raised eyebrow. “Mind explaining to me what you’re planning with… nitroglycerin and… What is this? Fucking gun powder? What? What are you doing?”

“You need to make a bomb,” Taylor said without preamble. 

“Excuse me?” Eric asked, his voice dangerously low. Tris looked up at him and saw that his face had gotten hard. 

“Look, how many of your Abnegation friends died during Jeanine’s attack?” Taylor asked Tris. 

Eric spoke up before Tris had a chance to. “That is a very low blow,” he said through clenched teeth. “Hurting the people on the base isn’t going to make up for all of the shit that Jeanine did.”

“No, but you’re a bigger fool than I thought if you think that they’re going to do jack shit to help you,” Taylor said with venom in her voice. “Ellen told us what you’d discussed during your midnight meeting the other week. Exactly how long do you want to sit around the base without a word from the government? Two more weeks to make it into a full month? Three months? Six? A year? Five years?”

“And you honestly think that blowing up the base is going to help any of us?” Tris asked with anger. 

Instead of verbally replying right away, Taylor just offered the two of them a creepy, Cheshire Cat smile. “I have a plan in mind, but it goes a hell of a lot farther than simply bombing the base,” she said after a moment. 

Eric and Tris exchanged a confused look before they looked back to the younger girl. “Then tell us what your plan is.”

“That’s also part of my plan,” Taylor said as she crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “It’s the part where I only tell people what they specifically need to know in order to do what needs to be done. It’s called-”

“Liability. I know,” Eric finished for her.

“What does that mean?” Tris asked as she looked between the two of them. 

“Another way to describe is is willful blindness, or willful ignorance,” Eric said. “Let’s put it this way: when you were growing up— and pretend for like two seconds that you didn’t grow up in Abnegation— when you were growing up, did you ever know that Caleb was up to something, but he wouldn’t tell you what it was? And later, when he got into trouble, did your parents turn to you and demanded to know if you were aware of what Caleb was doing? But you didn’t know, so how is it fair that they punished you for something that Caleb did, but you didn’t know about?”

“I… I think that I followed that?” Tris said slowly. She turned back to Taylor. “So your plan is to keep us in the dark except for the things that we can help you with.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Taylor said. And then she pointed to the things on the table. “And right now, I need for you to make me a bomb.” She pushed an empty, plastic container closer to Eric. 

He considered her for a long while. Tris wasn’t sure what was going through his mind in that moment, but she knew that he must have been considering all of the pros and cons of their situation and what Taylor was asking. 

Finally, he picked up the container and pried the lid off. “What kind of bomb are you talking about here?”

* * *

Tris felt as if she’d barely just laid back down on her cot when Lucy eagerly shook her awake. Tris groaned and cracked her eyes open. The sky that had been black a moment ago was now bright blue. 

“So? What happened last night?!” Lucy whispered. 

“I can’t tell you that, but I can promise you that Taylor will be contacting you soon enough,” Tris said. 

“Well, you and Eric need to get up if you don’t want to make the Watchers suspicious!” Lucy said with a bright smile. With a frustrated sigh, Tris kicked the blankets off and looked over to Eric’s cot. It was neatly made up, like it always was in the mornings. 

“Where’s Eric?” she asked as she gathered her clothes to go change. 

“At breakfast, of course,” Lucy said with a roll of her eyes. Tris went into the bathroom to change, and then she went to the mess hall to grab some breakfast as well. 

The others gave her questioning looks when she sat down, but a glare from Eric stopped them from voicing even the most vague questions about their trip the night before. The only one who didn’t seem upset over Eric’s and Tris’s lack of explanation was Lucy, who happily sat down between Tom and Marco with a bowl of colorful cereal. 

Marco and Tom took cues from Lucy and tried to put figuring out what Eric and Tris had been up to behind them. Christina and Uriah, however, were not as easily sated, and kept giving the pair questioning looks all throughout breakfast.

“I think that I’m going to go see if I can get a pick-up game of something going outside,” Lucy said as they stood in the line to return their dishes after they’d finished. “I think that it’ll be a nice day today, and it seems like such a shame to waste it. Anybody else want in?”

“I’ll go hit up some of the night-shift adults,” Marco said with a big grin on his face. 

“I’ll go with you to talk with the kids,” Tom said. 

“Pass,” Christina said with a sour look on her face.

“I’m with her,” Uriah said, as he jabbed his thumb in Christina’s direction. 

“Suit yourself,” Lucy said with an absent shrug. “Meet us at the diamond in… let’s say half an hour?”

“Great, see you then,” Marco said as he left the mess hall. Lucy and Tom linked arms and followed after him. 

Christina, Eric, Tris, and Uriah returned to their room. As soon as the door had shut behind them, Christina turned to face Eric and Tris. 

“Would you mind telling us what happened?” Christina asked sharply, her voice low. 

“She’s got a plan,” Tris said as she started to absently rummage through her backpack.

“Why, thank you Captain Obvious! We all fucking know that she’s got a plan, but would you mind elaborating on it a bit?” Christina snapped at her friend. 

“What’s that phrase that you used last night?” Tris asked Eric. He was heading towards the bathroom with a towel slung over his shoulder. 

“Willful ignorance,” he said simply without pausing. “Best to be kept in the dark for accountability’s sake when the pieces fall and people start getting into some deep shit.” He vanished into the bathroom.

Both Christina and Uriah stared after him, even several minutes after the door had swung shut behind him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Christina finally snapped at Tris. 

“You’ll see,” Tris said simply. She hadn’t actually needed anything, but had only wanted something to do with her hands. “I’m going to go take a walk. Now that you have as much as I can tell you, you should go join Lucy and the others outside.”

She left the room then, and started to aimlessly wander around the base. There was so much on her mind, and walking around helped to deal with her churning thoughts. 

It hurt her to think that the hopes of at least a million people rode on one fourteen year old girl who was the daughter of a dish washer on the base. Even though Taylor had reassured Tris and Eric the night before that the seven of them would each have a roll to play in the end, none of them would know what the other was doing.

Taylor’s decision to be the only one who knew every piece of the puzzle made sense to Tris the longer she thought about it. Especially if the military people found out what Taylor was doing. One person would be locked up, but the others would only know about what she’d told them. They would be able to carry on, regardless. 

Tris only just hoped that Taylor could give instructions to everybody before the military got wind of what was happening. They’d been careful, talking in whispers with their heads bowed, talking about important things as vaguely as possible, midnight meetings, turning the cameras off and making sure that the crew wasn’t watching. 

But a group as large as those standing against the government was bound to slip up sooner or later. They were bound to hear a whisper, see something that they weren’t supposed to, put two and two together and end up with four. 

Tris stopped and leaned up against the wall somewhere in the dorm section on the base. She slid to the floor and buried her head in her hands. 

Her entire life was one giant mess after another. First Jeanine, then Evelyn, and now this. 

In a way, she wished that they’d never found her mother’s USB; that the entire city had remained in the dark about everything. With Evelyn and Jeanine out of the way, they could have gone back to their lives, only ever thinking of the watchers as an afterthought. Some omniscient presence that may or may not actually exist anymore. 

And in fact, why had she picked Dauntless? She would probably still be in the city if she’d picked Candor. 

Of course, in Tris’s mind, she knew that she’d made the right choice. She met Eric after all, and she was also still alive. If she’d stayed in Abnegation, she probably would have been killed. If she’d picked Erudite, she would have been swept up in Jeanine’s madness and would probably be sitting in jail right now. 

Of course, there wasn’t much difference between the city’s jail, the city itself, and the military base. They were all prisoners in different ways.

“Tris, there you are,” Eric said as he walked over to her. Tris looked up at him, feeling confused.

“I thought that you were going to take a shower,” she said.

“I did,” Eric said. “That was hours ago. I’ve been looking all over for you.” 

Tris let her head roll back against the wall and gave Eric a look of pure despair. Eric slid down the wall to sit next to her on the floor. 

“What’s up?” he asked as he gently bumped her shoulder with his.

“I was thinking about the Jeanine sympathizers and the Factionless that are currently in jail back home,” Tris whispered under her breath. “I was very close to becoming one of them. And so were you, probably. If you’d stayed with Erudite and if I’d picked it.”

“Yeah, we probably would have sided with Jeanine just to save our own skins,” Eric agreed carefully. “But why are you thinking about this right now?”

“It sort of occurred to me that, those people who are sitting in jail right now aren’t that different from the rest of the people in the city. Or us. We might have a gilded cage, but a prison is a prison.”

Eric wrapped his arm around Tris’s shoulders and kissed her temple. He didn’t say anything; they both knew that they were being watched at the moment. But words about Taylor’s plan, about the bomb that they’d made last night hung heavy between them. 

They both lost track of how long that they sat like that, curled around one another. 

“Hey, Eric, Tris!” Roger said as he came around the corner. “Dinner’s just about over, so you might want to head over there before all of the good stuff’s really gone tonight.”

“It’s gotten so late,” Tris mumbled as she and Eric stood up. “I hadn’t even realized. I feel so self-centered.”

“You aren’t self-centered,” Eric whispered against the top of her head. “You’re just depressed. There’s a difference.”

“I feel self-centered,” Tris said. 

“Well, you’re not. You’ve been exceptionally giving and patient with everybody. It’s understandable that you’d need some time to yourself.”

“But I wasn’t by myself, I was with you,” Tris said as she looked up at him. 

“Because I love you and I was worried about you. I still am,” Eric replied evenly. “I know that I’m close to my own breaking point, too. But I know that I’ll get through it because I have you.”

“Thanks,” Tris said as she leaned against his side. “I love you, too.”

* * *

Another two weeks passed slowly. Tris knew that Taylor had already put her plan into motion, but neither she nor Eric had heard from the girl at all. However, with the way that the others were acting around them, they knew that Taylor must have told them what their part during the entire thing would be. 

“Tris, Eric, come play foosball with us!” Ellen exclaimed. She and another girl named Valerie came into the library where Tris and Eric were reading quite abruptly. 

In a normal library, the librarian at least would have silenced the girl, but this was no ordinary library. The librarian, checking her email on a computer, didn’t so much as bat an eye when they came in. After all, until Ellen and Valerie came in, Eric and Tris had been the only other people in the library. 

“I’m going to cream you this time,” Eric said as he put aside the book that he was reading.

“Oh come on, old man!” Valerie said as the four of them left the library. “We have you beat, 157 to nothing.”

“Yes, but we’ve got a very solid plan to beat you using math and logic now!” Eric exclaimed. 

“Face it, they’ve got us beat by the simple fact that we didn’t even know what a foosball table was until a month ago,” Tris said with an irritated sigh. “They grew up playing around with one.”

They walked into the small recreation room. Along with the foosball table, there was also a pool table and a table set up so that people could play cards, although cards had to be supplied, as the cards kept “walking away”.

“What time is it? I’ve got an appointment in an hour,” Valerie whispered to Ellen. Ellen let her friend look at her watch, and then the two of them moved over to stand on one side of the foosball table. 

A good five minutes passed as the four of them played the game. Eric let out a loud groan of frustration when they once again lost. 

“Come on, Tris! We had them beat! Why did you do that?” Eric complained.

“I’m sorry, it was stuck!” Tris protested loudly. Eric continued to glare at her, but Tris put on her best pout. 

“Come here, you know I can’t be too mad at you for too long,” Eric said as he opened his arms out for Tris. She moved against him quickly, and turned her face up for a kiss.

A second later, the entire base shook and the air was filled with a fierce booming sound. 

Startled, Tris took half a step away from Eric, but neither let go of the others. 

Ellen looked at her watch. “Right on time,” she said simply. 

Not a second later, the air was filled with a high-pitched siren wail. “And there’s the emergency shut-down,” Valerie said.

“What’s happening?” Tris asked, feeling more than a little afraid. 

“I think I know,” Eric said with an irritated frown. “The bomb Taylor had us make.”

“Yes, but how are you using it?” Tris demanded of Ellen and Valerie. Valerie only just made an explosion motion with her hands. Tris gave the younger girl an annoyed look.

“We don’t know, okay?” Ellen snapped at her. “Tay was insistent that nobody but her should know the whole plan. All we had to do was to make sure that you guys were in the rec room at 3:43 exactly.”

“Wait, you guys built a bomb?” Valerie asked. 

“I think that it’s probably safe to admit to it now that it’s gone off,” Eric said. Tris nodded with silent agreement. “We knew that she’d be using it, but-”

Eric’s next words were cut off by another explosion. They all looked to each other. 

“Um, we didn’t build a second bomb,” Tris said, her eyes wide with fright.

“Taylor was watching us the entire time,” Eric said. “And I was explaining what I was doing and why. She must have made others after we left.”

The door to the recreation room was thrown open just then, and somebody poked their head into the room. “Come on! They’re having a base-wide evacuation right now!” the man exclaimed. The four of them scrambled to follow after him. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some pretty graphic murders in this chapter, so please be warned.

Tris and Eric followed after the man who led the four of them to presumed safety. After about a minute, the five of them met up with a bunch of other, fleeing groups. Tris reached out and grabbed Eric’s hand; she clung to him tightly, afraid that she’d lose sight of him during all of the panic.

She’d been separated from him when Jeanine attacked, and it was no something that she wanted to go through again. That fear that something had happened to him, the horror that he might have been killed.

For all that Tris clung to him, he clung to her. Obviously, he didn’t want a repeat of Jeanine’s attack, either. 

They followed after the crowd, running down and down seemingly endless stairs. The recreation room was located on the first floor, so they figured that they must have been deep underground at that point. 

Finally, they got to a large cavern basement, where other groups of people were walking down from other staircases. 

“Tris, Eric, I’m glad to see you unharmed,” said June as she rushed over to them. “There was… an unfortunate accident with Uriah, and the last I saw of him, the medics who worked on the base were taking him away.”

“Uriah? What happened?” Tris asked her urgently. 

“He was caught up in the first explosion, I’m afraid,” June said slowly. 

“Can you tell us what happened?” Eric asked.

“I’m afraid that I don’t know that,” June said sharply. “I was tasked to locate the remaining six of you and to make sure that you’re okay. General Ivy will want to talk to you. I’ve put Christina and Tom in a room over here. Please, come with me.”

Tris and Eric exchanged a look before they followed after June. She led them through the crowd and unlocked a door. It was dark inside, but from the light from the main room, they could just make out Christina and Tom sitting in the dark.

“Please wait here until I can locate Lucy and Marco,” June said as she gestured for them to go into the room. Tris rushed in and hugged her friend. 

June shut the door, and plunged them into complete darkness. 

“Are you guys okay?” Christina asked urgently. She was hanging onto Tris. 

“We’re fine. Are you? June told us that Uriah was caught up in the blast,” Tris said. 

“Ellen and Valerie told us after the first explosion went off that they’d been tasked to keep us away from the blast,” Eric went on. “And furthermore, I built one bomb, but might have unwittingly taught Taylor how to make more.”

“You?!” Christina asked sharply. 

“I’m sorry! I knew that there was a bomb, but I didn’t know that she was going to make more!” Eric snapped. “And with what Ellen and Val told us, I was certain that Taylor had instructed others to make sure that the rest of you guys would be safe and far away from the explosions!”

“Well, it’s no use fighting over what we don’t know,” Tom spoke up. “I just hope that Lucy and Marco are okay. I wasn’t with them when the explosion happened. I was grabbing an early dinner, because I completely spaced and forgot to eat lunch…”

“I’m sure that they’re fine,” Tris tried to reassure him. “June only said that Uriah had been hurt.”

“Did she say how badly?” Christina asked.

“No,” Tris said when she realized that the others couldn’t see her in the dark. 

The door opened again, and June stood in the doorway with Marco and Lucy.

“Lucy,” Tom breathed with relief. The three of them ran towards one another and embraced one another. 

“I’m so glad that you’re okay,” Lucy said tearfully. 

“General Ivy will be down to talk with you shortly,” June said to the six of them before she shut the door. 

“What happened? There was this big explosion, and then another one and I was freaking out, and we couldn’t find you, Tom,” Lucy said in one, big breath. 

“Eric built a bomb,” Christina said bitterly. 

“People weren’t supposed to get hurt!” Eric protested.

“Oh grow the fuck up,” Christina snapped at him. “It’s a bomb! People were always going to get hurt, and you know it!”

“Let me rephrase: the people on our team weren’t supposed to get hurt. Especially not Uriah!” Eric rounded on her. “Taylor said that she had a plan, and part of that was to have me build a bomb. She watched me as I made it, and obviously went off and made more!”

“Guys, the absolute last thing that we need to do is to fight amongst ourselves!” Lucy snapped. “You can be angry at him later, but right now, while Taylor’s plan is in action, we need to focus on what needs to be done!”

“Speaking of that, what does need to be done?” Tom asked. 

“We only just built the bomb,” Eric said. 

“I had to stand outside a specific hall for an hour and take note of all of the people who came and went,” Lucy said blankly. 

“I had to do that, too,” Christina spoke up.

“I had to tell Taylor a bunch of information about the lay-out of the city,” Marco explained. 

“I told her a bunch of stuff about the populations of the city, as well as the people who were in charge, and the kinds of transportation that they had,” Tom finished. 

“What exactly is Taylor planning with any of that information?” Tris asked blankly. 

“But isn’t that the point?” Eric asked. “That nobody but Taylor knew the full plan.”

“Yes, but now that things have been put into motion, don’t we have a right to know what we put our lives on the line for?” Christina asked. 

“I suppose that we do, but what could Taylor do with the info of the city that we gave her on top of knowing who’s coming and going in one hall in hour-long periods?” Tris asked. 

“It’s not just who’s coming and going down that hall in two hours, but rather, Taylor probably had people switching off, without telling the other people keeping watch what she was doing. Or that there would be other people keeping watch,” Eric pointed out. 

“He does have a point,” Lucy said. “But we can’t possibly put this info together and end up with Taylor’s plan. There’s obviously a hell of a lot more to it than the seven of us knew about.”

“Whatever happens, we all know that General Ivy will think that we knew something,” Tris said. “So when he comes, we cannot tell him anything about Taylor, let alone the bomb that Eric made.”

“Well, duh,” Lucy said. They could practically see the sarcastic roll of her eyes by the tone of her voice. “I’m insulted that you even had to say something like that, Tris. I thought that we were friends.”

“We’re in this together, regardless of anything else,” Tris said. She looked blindly over to where Christina’s voice had come from, even though she couldn’t see her other female friend in the dark. 

Christina reached for Tris in the dark, and Tris clutched at her friend, thankful for a bit of human contact.

“Hey, speaking of inhumane treatment, keeping us literally locked up in the dark sure is not very nice,” Lucy said. 

“What were all of the other people from the base doing in the basement?” Tris asked. 

“They were just… sort of sitting around? Talking quietly amongst themselves,” Lucy said. Since she and Marco had come in a few minutes after Tris and Eric had, they might have seen more than any of the others had. 

“But there’s still lights on in there?” Tris pressed. 

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “So it’s bullshit and cruel that they’d put us into this room with no lights on!”

“How long do you think that we’ll be kept literally and figuratively in the dark?” Christina asked. 

“Since there’s not even a proper way to tell time in here, we’ll only be able to know how long that we were kept in here until we’re let out,” Eric said bitterly. “Might as well make ourselves comfortable. He’s in charge of the base, and he’s probably dealing with a lot of other shit at the moment.”

* * *

Tris was awoken by somebody opening the door and shining a flashlight over their faces. She put her hand up in front of her eyes to shield them from the bright light. 

“Sorry, guys, I only have a few minutes at the most,” Ellen said as she pointed the flashlight at the floor. 

“Oh, I’m really glad that you’re here,” Lucy said as she surged to her feet. “They wouldn’t tell us anything at all, except that Uriah was caught up in one of the blasts.”

“I don’t have news on Uriah, but I had hear that, too,” Ellen said. “I don’t know how they got to this conclusion, but they’ve grabbed Taylor. So whatever you say to them, you don’t know anything.”

“We’d already come to the conclusion that we obviously weren’t going to tell them about Eric making one bomb, but since Taylor was captured, it would probably be best for all if we didn’t say anything. After all, in case you hadn’t noticed, but we’re sort of locked into a room without any lights,” Tom said. 

Ellen moved the beam of the flashlight over the walls, and then, when she’d found the light switch, she moved over to try it.

“Don’t you think that we didn’t try that when we first got put in here?” Christina asked. Ellen still flipped the switch a couple of times.

“Yeah, because they’re totally making things better,” Ellen said with a sneer as she dropped her hand. “Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to talk with Taylor before she was taken, so I don’t know if everything worked out as well as to be expected.”

“That’s okay,” Tris said. “We appreciate you risking coming to try to fill us in. You should go now before you get caught.”

“Wait, what time is it?” Eric asked. 

“It’s a bit after midnight right now,” Ellen said. Then she left, and they heard her relocking the door behind her. 

Tris turned to try and see the others, but they’d been plunged back into the absolute darkness again. “They haven’t brought us any food, and Ellen was the only one who’s been by to see us who seemed concerned about our wellbeing,” she said. 

“She’s been the only one to come and see us, period,” Christina said dryly. “June coming by with Eric and Tris, and then Marco and Lucy doesn’t exactly count. She didn’t fucking tell us anything, other than to stay in here.”

“This defiantly falls under the category of ‘cruel and unusual treatment,” Lucy said. “They can’t fucking keep us in here, in the dark, with no food.”

“We should have asked Ellen to bring us stuff, but I also don’t want for her to put herself more at risk than she already has,” Tom said. 

“She’s already risked so much,” Tris agreed. 

“There’s not a lot that we can do, so we might as well try to save our energy,” Eric said. Tris moved closer to him to get comfortable again, and started to drift off to sleep again. 

* * *

 

It felt as though Tris had just closed her eyes when the door was wrenched open and another bright light shone in on them. Unlike when Ellen had come in, these lights were meant to blind. 

Dark figures rushed into the room, and rough hands yanked Tris to her feet. She was pushed through the door. 

Blank faces stared at the six of them as they were forced to walk through the basement. Nobody said anything or even tried to help them; they just watched in silence as those from the city were paraded past them by armed guards. 

They were marched up the stairs, up and up back at least to the ground level. Tris vaguely wondered why there were so much basement space—had they anticipated needing all of it? For a fall-out shelter?

But she didn’t have much time to muse on it, as they she watched as the guard “escorting” Lucy shoved her into a room that another guard had opened. Lucy stumbled and fell into the room, and then the guard threw Tris into the room after her. 

Tris had more grace than Lucy had had, and managed to stay upright. Christina was thrown into the room as well, but Tris didn’t see where Eric, Marco, and Tom had been taken. 

The door roughly slammed shut after Christina had been thrown into the room, and they heard the guards stomping away. The three girls looked gloomily at each other. 

“What’s this about?” Christina asked.

“They think that if they separate us, it’ll break our spirits,” Lucy said. “Especially Tris from Eric and me from Marco and Tom. And furthermore, they think that we won’t have time to come up with a lie to tell them.”

“But they locked us in that room in the basement for hours!” Tris pointed out angrily. “It’s too late for that!”

“I didn’t say that it was a fucking good plan now, did I?” Lucy snapped at her.

“There’s no point in getting angry at me!” Tris reminded her gently. Lucy heaved a heavy sigh and hung her head. 

“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” Lucy said quietly. “We need to stick together now more than ever.”

A moment later, the door was wrenched open again and two guards stepped into the room with trays of food. More armed guards stood in the hall, ready for the girls to try something. The guards dropped the trays onto the floor, and some of the food slopped off from the trays. The guards turned around and left without another word.

“Well, at least our new quarters come with room service,” Christina said with a roll of her eyes. She bent over one of the trays and tentatively poked some of the potatoes with her finger. “Although calling this food would be an insult to actual food. Even the Abnegation would find it difficult to call this food, and you guys don’t know what salt is.”

Tris didn’t bother to tell Christina that she was Dauntless now; it was all just a ruse invented by the people who were currently keeping them prisoner. 

“Well, we should eat at least just to keep our strength up,” Lucy said as she bent over to pick up one of the trays. Tris picked up the third one and sat down against the wall to eat. 

The food was runny and made the plain Abnegation food taste better by comparison. But, Tris had little room for complaint; she was just grateful that they’d bothered to bring them food at all. 

“Why do you think that they’ve moved us now?” Lucy asked. “Is it easier access? Or maybe they thought that it would raise less suspicions if they didn’t see guards constantly coming and going from that room in the basement?”

“But everybody saw us being escorted forcefully by armed guards,” Tris pointed out. “Everybody was watching us. If they didn’t want to raise suspicions, they would have moved everybody else from the basement, and then moved us.”

“That is true,” Lucy said with a slight nod of her head. 

“I just wish that somebody would come and give us more news,” Christina said. “Especially about Uriah. I’m so worried about him.”

“Another tactic: to keep info from us,” Lucy said. She’d finished eating, and shoved the tray away. It slid against the floor until it hit the door with a rough clang. 

“What are we going to do, though?” Tris asked.

“The same thing that we’d been planning to do earlier: to lie our damned faces off and pray that they don’t kill us,” Lucy said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She lay down on the floor and closed her eyes. 

Tris followed suit. Hopefully, now that they’d been moved, they might get some real answers. Or at least, to piece together what had happened based on how they’re treated by General Ivy. 

And, basing on how they were forced from the basement, things could possibly not be going well. 

* * *

 

For the third time, Tris was awoken from a light sleep by somebody roughly opening the door. This time, no bright flashlights were shone into their faces, but that was only because the hall beyond was brightly lit with florescent lights. 

“Christina Wilkins,” one of the guards barked out. Christina scrambled to her feet, and the guard reached in and roughly yanked her out from the cell. The other guards slammed the door once Christina was out from the room. 

“Now what?” Tris sleepily asked Lucy.

“Questioning us individually to make sure that our stories add up with the account of the others,” Lucy said. “We just have to stick to the truth.”

Tris closed her eyes, but found that she couldn’t get to sleep again. She was too on edge, knowing that the guards would be back eventually to question her elsewhere. 

She surged to her feet and started to restlessly pace along the side wall of the cell. Ten steps forward, ten steps back. Over and over again. 

“Would you fucking sit down?! I know that you’re nervous, but pacing is just putting me on edge!” Lucy snapped at her. 

“Sorry,” Tris said. She leaned against the wall and slid to the ground. Then, she buried her head in her hands. “It’s honestly working. I’m so on edge, and I feel like I’m going to snap!”

“I know,” Lucy said. “I don’t know if I’ve told you, but before I somehow ended up in Dauntless, but I was honestly planning to take after my father. He’s a judge in Candor. I studied law, and a lot of psychology of criminals, how to get people to do what you want them to do… Stuff like that.”

“You’ve mentioned it, but I didn’t know what it was something that you were passionate about,” Tris said. She picked up her head and regarded the other woman. 

Lucy was a few years older than Eric, maybe around twenty-two or twenty-three. Her hair was blonde, like Tris’s was, only she’d cut most of her hair off and then shaved a strip off of the side. It was a popular style in Dauntless when they’d left, and it wasn’t something that Tris enjoyed a lot. 

Like Tris, Lucy was dressed in all black, the same clothes that they’d left the city from. Combat boots, sturdy denim pants, a tank top. There was a dragon made of fire the curled around her right bicep, and she had snake-bite piercings, one on either side of her mouth. 

She didn’t look like a lawyer, or somebody who enjoyed learning about stuff like that. But then again, Tris figured that she didn’t look like somebody who’d spent a lot of time helping to rehabilitate the homeless. 

“Things are probably going to change a lot if… when we get back to the city,” Tris went on after a moment. “Would you want to go back to studying to become a lawyer?”

“Yeah, I’d love to do that,” Lucy said. She offered Tris a faint smile. “What would you want to do, if you could do anything?”

“I don’t know,” Tris said slowly. “I only became a leader in training because if I didn’t, then Peter would have. And he would have been awful. All of my life since my aptitude test has been largely spent on trying to survive or stopping the next power-hungry asshole from getting into a position of actual power.”

“Nothing wrong with wanting to be a wife,” Lucy pointed out.

“No, there’s not. But I’m also not somebody who wants to sit around all day long and let my husband bring in all the money,” Tris said. “I’ll probably go back to helping the homeless after this.”

“Isn’t it funny that we’re thinking about going back to the things that we grew up doing?” Lucy said after a moment. 

“It’s familiar,” Tris said. “I don’t know much about psychology, but that’s probably it.”

“You’re probably right,” Lucy said. 

* * *

 

It was hard to tell time in the cell, but Tris figured that maybe an hour or so had passed before the door was opened again. A guard shoved Christina in. 

“Beatrice Prior,” the guard said. Tris got slowly to her feet, a horrible ball of terror settled in the pit of her stomach. On shaking legs, she walked to the door, and once she was in range, the guard grabbed her and yanked her out into the hall. 

Another guard slammed the door shut behind Tris. The guard frog-marched Tris down the hall, and into another room. 

This room was like the cell, except there was a table and two chairs on either side of it. In the far corner, Taylor was sitting on a chair, with her arms behind her back. There was a strip of tape pressed over her mouth, and her arms were behind her back; her arms were probably restrained behind her back. 

There was a guard standing next to her, but he didn’t have much to do, as restrained as Taylor was. 

“Sit down,” the guard who’d brought Tris into the room barked. She walked the few feet over to the table and sat down in the chair that faced Taylor. 

As soon as she sat down, the door opened again and General Ivy stormed into the room. 

“Good morning, Ms. Prior,” Ryan barked out. “I trust that you know Ms. Vaughn.” He motioned to Taylor in the corner.

“I know her,” Tris said. No use in denying that, since she was sure that he already knew that they knew each other. She opened her mouth to say more, but decided to wait and see what he would say to her, rather than to make the situation any worse than it already was. 

“Would you like to fathom a guess as to why Ms. Vaughn is handcuffed to a chair?” Ryan asked her.

“I don’t know, but you’re the people who’ve kept millions locked up in a city, gave them drugs and guns, and called it entertainment,” Tris said. “So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you’re calling Taylor’s treatment as entertainment, too.”

Ryan gritted his teeth, but didn’t comment. 

“Yesterday, at sixteen hundred hours, four bombs went off in the span of about fifteen minutes,” he went on as he sunk into the chair opposite Tris. “What exactly do you know about that?”

“I know that Uriah was caught in one of the blasts, but I don’t know anything beyond that,” Tris said evenly. She kept her face blank. “And that you locked us in a room with no lights, and gave us no food for hours. And then, you moved us upstairs, separated us, and gave us the most disgusting meal that I’ve ever had the misfortune to put into my mouth.”

That earned her more teeth gritting. “What?” Tris went on, despite her better judgement. “Does it hurt when people tell you the fucking truth? It’s little wonder that all of the other projects ended in complete disaster. And the reason why Project Divided City hadn’t ended in disaster, too, was because it was something that was boiling up. It was going to happen on its own sooner or later. We all know what it is that you’re doing—have done—to us. How long do you think that it was going to last after we found my mom’s USB?”

Ryan surged to his feet and struck Tris across the face. She somehow managed to not only remain in her chair, but also to remain upright. Her face stung painfully, and she felt something wet dripping out from her nose. 

She sniffled, and smelt the rank odor of blood. She reached up and wiped at her nose with the back of her wrist, and was unsurprised that her hand came away bloody.

“Do you honestly mean to try to bully me into admitting to something that I didn’t fucking do? Or are you just trying to shut me up?” Tris said lowly. “I’ve got some news for you: everybody knows about what you’ve done. You can kill me, you can kill all of us. But the world knows now. It’s too late.”

“Oh, when we’re finished with you, you’re going to wish that we’d killed you,” Ryan said as he got into her face. 

“Does threatening girls half your size and age somehow make you feel better?” Tris said. She refused to be cowed by him. “Does it make you feel like a man?”

Ryan’s hands clenched at the edge of the table; he was clearly fighting the urge to hit her again. 

“Get her out of here,” he ordered. “Isolate her from the others.”

The guard who’d brought Tris into the room marched over to her and roughly yanked her to her feet. He took her out of the room, and started to lead her in the opposite direction that they’d come from. 

With every step that Tris took, her heart hammered heavily in her chest. It was so loud, it was a wonder that the guards who were escorting her to the isolation room couldn’t hear it. 

They’d gone about a foot from the interrogation room when a loud explosion went off. It was close to Tris, much too close, and her ears were ringing. 

“Get the prisoner into a cell and-“ Ryan started, but his words were cut off by a loud bang. It sounded like a gunshot to Tris, but it felt as though she’d been submerged underwater, so she couldn’t be sure. 

A second later, the guards around her fell to the ground, too, almost in unison. A hand yanked her away from the guard who’d been holding onto her arm before he could drag her to the ground. 

Tris blankly looked back down at him as she was pulled away, and was more than a little surprised to see that half of his face was missing. 

“Tris, don’t look at it,” a familiar voice said. Tris’s hearing was slowly starting to come back. She looked blankly up at the person who was pulling her away, and was more than a little surprised to see that it was Four. 

 


	14. Chapter 14

“Four, what are you doing here?” Tris gasped out as they ran through the halls. 

“I thought that it had been rather obvious that I’m rescuing you,” he said flatly. He spared a second to flash her a cocky grin. “And trust me when I say that I learned from the last time that I rescued you. I fully intend to reunite you with Eric, rather than to kiss you. You don’t owe me anything just because I did this.”

“No, but…” Tris shook her head slightly. “How are you out of the city? Did you leave through the tunnels?”

“Nope,” Four said. “It was all a part of Taylor’s plan.”

“Taylor!” Tris said as she pulled up short. “She was held captive in the interrogation room!”

“She told us not to worry about her, because rescuing the seven of you was more important,” Four said. He tugged on her hand. “I don’t mean to pressure you or anything, but time isn’t exactly on our side right now.”

“You’re going to have to explain everything to me, but later,” Tris said as she raced ahead of him. “Where are we going? I know this base very well after having spent a month here, and nothing better to occupy my time.”

“Outside, there’s a helicopter waiting,” he explained. “Again, everything will be explained later.” 

“The fastest way is down here,” Tris said. “Do you know exactly where the helicopter will be waiting?”

“On the diamond?” Four said with confusion. 

“I know where it is,” Tris said with a slight nod. “This way!” She turned and lead Four down a different hall than the one that they were down. 

After a moment, Tris pushed open the doors that would lead to the field where the children played a variety of sports on nice days. She could see a helicopter off in the distance, and a bunch of people standing around it with guns. 

“Go to them,” Four said as he gave her a slight shove towards the waiting helicopter. “They’re waiting for you, and won’t leave until the seven of you are on.”

“Wait, but Uriah was hurt in the first explosion, the one yesterday,” Tris said. “I don’t know what kind of condition that he’s in, but he’s probably in the medical wing.”

“Shit,” Four whispered under his breath. “You have to go and tell the people waiting about Uriah. I have more work to do.” He turned and ran back into the base. 

Tris watched him until he went inside, and then she took off as fast as she could towards the waiting helicopter. 

“Tris!” Chad exclaimed once he was able to see who was running towards them. He handed his gun to the man standing next to him, and then caught her up in a warm hug. 

“I have so many questions, so hopefully, you’ll be there, too,” Tris said as she pulled away from him. “Four told me to tell you guys that Uriah was caught in the explosion yesterday. I don’t know any more about that, but we might not be able to move him if he’s in too critical condition.”

“Shit, that’s awful,” Chad said with a frown. “Please, get onto the helicopter. We have to be ready to get you guys out of here as soon as possible. Christina and Lucy are already onboard.” 

He walked her the few feet over to the helicopter, and yanked open the door. Christina and a man that Tris didn’t know helped Tris climb onto the helicopter. 

“I hope that we’ll be able to have another meeting in the future, but if that doesn’t happen, then it’s been a sheer pleasure to have known you, Tris,” Chad said. He shook her hand, and Tris felt a surge of panic. 

So many people had already died, and how many more would die before this was all over? And for what, exactly? Some government official’s entertainment? 

Chad released her hand and jogged back to rejoin the wall of defense around the helicopter. Christina pulled Tris into a seat, and the man helped to buckle Tris in before he handed her a headset. 

“Check check, can you hear me?” the man said into the microphone on his own headset. Tris only heard him through the headphones over her ears. 

“Roger that,” she said into the microphone in front of her face. The man went back to his seat in the front. “Okay, I have so many questions,” Tris said into the microphone as she turned to face Christina and Lucy. 

“Us, too,” Christina agreed with a grimace.

“Tris, you’re bleeding,” Lucy said as she reached over Christina to touch Tris’s face gently. Her fingers came back bloody. 

“There was another explosion,” Tris explained. “I was very close to it when it went off. I couldn’t hear for a few minutes, and my ears are still ringing slightly.”

“It should pass,” said another man up at the front. “But we’re going to take all of you directly to a hospital, just because everybody is super worried about you. You can get checked out then.”

They sat for silence in the helicopter for a really long time. 

“What did General Ivy talk to you about?” Christina asked Tris. 

“He started out asking me about Taylor,” Tris said. “She was-“

“Restrained in the interrogation room,” Lucy finished. “Christina told me when she was brought back.”

“Yeah. And then he started to ask me about what I knew about what had happened, but I started to call him out on his bullshit,” Tris went on. “He didn’t like that, and he slapped me. I think that I’m okay, but my nose started to bleed.”

“He’s so full of shit,” Christina said with a roll of her eyes. “He thinks that torturing a twelve year old girl in front of me is going to make me want to talk? Taylor knew what she was getting into. She knew the risks!” She scowled. 

“She’ll be okay,” Lucy gently reassured them. They all knew that it was a lie, but it still felt good to hear it, regardless. 

They lapsed into silence again for several minutes. Nobody knew what to say, and since nobody had any real answers, they remained in silence. 

“Look, somebody’s coming,” Lucy said. Tris looked out towards where the base was, and saw a couple of figures running out towards. She hoped that it was Eric, but also didn’t want to make Lucy sad if Tom and Marco got left behind. 

The two figures ran flat-out towards the helicopter. The guard let them pass without saying anything, and then Tris saw that it was both Tom and Marco. 

“Where is Eric?” Tris asked anxiously as they jumped onboard. 

“No idea,” Tom said as he sat down. “But we need to leave. Now.”

“What do you mean?” one of the men sitting up front asked. 

“NOW!” Tom barked out. 

A second later, gunfire ran out. Close, it was too close. Tris ducked down a little bit, and then saw that the guard around the helicopter were advancing towards the base. Then, she looked further beyond them, and saw that some of the military members were advancing towards the guard. 

The pilot started up the engine, and a second later, they were airborne. “We need to get out of here before you guys get captured again,” the second man explained as he handed two other headsets back to Tom and Marco. 

“What happened?” Tris asked once they had their headsets on. She now understood why they had them, because with the rotors spinning, it was exceptionally loud inside the helicopter. 

“I’m not quite sure, but we were told that there would be answers later,” Marco said. 

They all lapsed into silence and watched the scenery going by far below them. None of them had ever left the city before, let alone flown. It was a new and slightly exciting experience. Tris would have enjoyed it, except for the circumstances. Especially with Eric’s absence. 

She could only pray that he was okay. This time was even worse than when he’d been captured by Jeanine, because while Jeanine was mildly insane, the government officials wouldn’t hesitate a single second to hurt him in order to get back at Tris. 

Even though, in the long run, Tris realized that she’d had very little to do with Taylor’s plan. She’d brought Eric to Taylor that night, and then she’d watched that one hall for a single hour. It seemed as though more people had had a lot more to do. 

And Four. All of the people from the city. What exactly was the extent of Taylor’s plan? 

Tris wanted answers, and she hated how much she didn’t know. 

* * *

Finally, after about an hour, the helicopter set down on the top of a tall building. 

“Wow, look at this city!” Lucy said as people wearing medical scrubs came running out from a door on the roof. “I thought that our city was big, but apparently I don’t know anything.”

The nurses yanked the door open and jumped into the helicopter, before they helped the five of them from their seats. They all jumped down onto the roof, and they’d barely reached the door when the helicopter lifted away and was gone. 

The nurses lead them into the building, which was a hospital. 

“We need to do exams on all of you,” one of the nurses said. They pulled the girls away from Tom and Marco, and lead them into a different room. It was divided by colorful curtains, and the nurse who’d taken the girls told them to each go and sit on one of the exam tables. 

“Somebody will be with you in a moment,” the nurse said to Tris and Christina before she vanished into the curtained area that Lucy had gone into.

Tris heard Lucy and the nurse having a whispered conversation. However, she tried not to listen to what they were saying, since it was a medical exam, and thus, private. 

Finally, Tris heard the nurse yank back the curtains, and then she started to talk with Christina in the area next to where Tris was. It was even harder to not listen to their conversation, now, since they were only a few feet away from where Tris sat on the exam table. 

Finally, Tris saw Christina jump down off from the exam table, and then she left the room. The nurse yanked back the curtain. 

“Hello, Tris, how are you?” the nurse asked.

“I’ve been better,” Tris admitted. “I was standing too close to an explosion, and my ears are ringing a little bit.”

“Well, the fact that you can hear is a super good sign, but let me take a look, anyway,” the nurse said. She pulled out something from a pocket, and used it to look into Tris’s ears. She made a note on a tablet, and then she proceeded to give Tris a full physical exam. 

“I think that you’ll be okay,” the nurse said. “But we’ll keep an eye on your ears, just to be on the safe side. Let us know at once if the ringing gets worse, or if you can no longer hear. Other than that, you’re great. I’ll escort you to where the others are now.”

Tris jumped off from the table and followed the nurse out into the hall, and into an elevator. They rode it down a few floors, and then the nurse led her into some sort of visiting room that was filled with comfortable looking sofas and televisions.

As Tris walked further into the room, her attention was drawn to what was airing on all of the televisions, although they were all different feeds. 

It was the base, and the base was on fire. Half of it was destroyed. On one feed, Tris could see people huddled around behind a barricade, a safe distance away from the blaze. There were firetrucks and ambulances with their lights flashing. 

“Tris!” Christina barked out. Tris realized that her friend had been calling out her name for a few seconds now. She tore her gaze away from the TVs and looked over to her friends. They were all sitting there, and looked fine. 

But, beyond her friends from the base, her parents, Caleb, and Susan were sitting there, too. 

“Mom!” Tris exclaimed as her mom stood up. Natalie pulled Tris into a warm hug that lasted at least a minute. 

“I was so worried about you! We heard your warning over the radio, and I was so scared! I’ve been barely able to sleep at all since you left the city,” Natalie said. “But it got even worse when that young man came to tell us about her plan to break all of us out of the city.”

“Young man?” Tris asked with confusion. 

“You’d better sit down, because it’s a very long story,” Andrew said. Tris sat on a sofa between her parents, reluctant to even stop touching them for a moment. If Eric couldn’t be here, then they would do. 

“Okay, start from as soon as we left the city,” Tris said. 

“We sort of pulled back in the searching of the tunnels, reluctant to continue on in search of another door until we’d heard from you,” Natalie said. “But after we got your message, we stopped completely. We tried to keep ourselves busy in other ways, but then, two weeks ago, a young man approached me in the community center. He handed me a note, and then vanished. The note instructed for me to meet him down in the central room in the tunnels, so that night, Andrew and I went down to meet with him.

“He told us about a plan that was in progress in the base to free everybody from the city. We’d have to get the word out that we would be evacuating, and that the city would no longer be safe once the plan was put into motion.”

“He didn’t know everything, but he told us that the power to the fence would be shut off, and the only thing that we had to do would be to take down the fence,” Andrew went on. “So, that’s what we put all of our energy into doing after he left.”

“And then, two nights ago, he came to us again and told us that the power would go off the next day at four PM,” Natalie continued. “We just had to start telling people it that it was happening, and while we have relied on the rumor mill to spread news, I’ve never seen it spread this fast before.

“Right exactly when he told us that the power would go out, it did,” she finished. 

“It was probably right when the first explosion happened,” Tris said. “General Ivy told me that four bombs went off, but Eric and I only heard two before we went into the basement. They probably blew up the power switch for the fence, like we’d first discussed, but then used the other explosions to cover what they’d done. After all, if they only just blew up the power switch, the plan would have been super obvious.”

“You were so wrong to have picked Dauntless,” Caleb said from another sofa. “You are so smart, Beatrice.”

“None of that matters right now,” Tris said, her gaze on the ground. Then, she looked up at Caleb and Susan. “Does it? What’s going to happen to the city now?”

“I’ll let the news explain the rest,” Caleb said as he picked up a remote and flicked the sound on for one of the televisions. “We only just found out about this when we got here, anyway.”

“…the base that ran the experiment Project Divided City,” the lady on the news was saying. “Protesters against the inhumane treatment of those in the project have blown it up. In the resulting mess of the initial explosion, the people inside of the experiment cut the fence—which is normally electrified—and everybody escaped. An earlier survey of the city revealed that nobody currently remains in the city. The people who participated in the 70-year-old experiment have scattered to the nearest city, Aurora, where they have sought asylum.

“Since the experiment was first set up, people have always protested over it. However, nothing has ever lead to such violence as of yet. But, as we heard from Dr. Aguilar earlier, the entire idea of something as Project Divided City was a literal ticking time-bomb. What the future holds for the citizens of the experiment is up in the air, but everybody that we’ve talked to since this story first broke seems certain that this is the end of the experiment. Especially since the base where all of the video feeds were edited for consumption has been destroyed.”

Caleb muted the television again, and they all looked around at one another. 

“So, is it over?” Lucy finally asked a bit breathlessly. 

“This is just the beginning, but the nightmare is finally coming to an end,” Natalie agreed. 

Tris leaned against her mom and allowed herself to finally breathe freely for the first time since… since about the time that Tori first told her that she was divergent. 


	15. Epilogue

Tris waited on the front steps of the courthouse. There were only about a million people with cameras milling about behind the police barrier, but she didn’t pay them any attention. The past few days had been a complete madhouse of people shoving cameras into her face, of people wanting to talk to her. She hadn’t said anything, preferring to let the “handlers” do all of the talking. 

At the moment, the camera people were quiet and calm, but it was the proverbial eye of the storm. They’d gone into a frenzy when Tris had shown up, and now they were just waiting. 

A car pulled up in front of the courthouse, and when the door opened, Tris’s heart leapt into her throat. She raced down the steps and barreled into Eric, who seemed a little dazed over all of the cameras flashing and people calling out his name. 

“Tris,” he murmured into her hair as he embraced her tightly. 

“I cried so much when they said on the news that you’d been freed from the military people,” Tris whispered into his chest. “Nobody else had any news about what had happened to you, and I had to fucking hear it on the news.”

“Well, I’m safe now,” he whispered. “Shall we go inside and talk for a moment?” Tris could only nod with agreement. Eric lead her by the hand up the courthouse steps and inside of the dusty, old building. He pulled her over to an alcove where a bench was, and they sat down. 

“What happened?” Tris finally asked. “The news stations couldn’t offer any other details, other than that you’d been rescued from the building, and that you were fine.”

“Well, when the second wave hit, I was in a cell by myself. When things went to hell, the guards came in and dragged me from the room. They got into a fight with some people from the city… I don’t know who, but they all died trying to free me. But when the guards took me outside of the base— and by that time, it was already on fire— they were swarmed by a lot of press people and protesters. I guess that they all recognized me because of my neck tattoos. You know, my mom was super angry when she’d found out that I’d gotten them, but I’m glad that I got them now, because they probably saved my life.”

“I’m just glad that you’re safe and that you’re here right now,” Tris said as she moved closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face against his shoulder. “I know that we’re a very long way from the end, but our story is coming to a close.”

“No, it’s not,” Eric said.

“What do you mean?” she asked with a frown. 

“I mean that it’s not over. We might be working to put the nastiness of the experiment behind us, and all of the people responsible for it behind bars, but I think that there’s still one more chapter left of our story,” Eric said. But he had a faint smile, so Tris was reassured that it was something beyond good. 

* * *

The next few months seemed to drag by in trials of literally anybody who’d survived the attack on the base. It was mostly the high ranking military members, but there were a few people who’d worked with editing the film who were on trial, too. Also, a lot of people from the American government were on trial as well, including former President Addis, who’d been disgracefully impeached after General Ivy had dragged him through the mud the first week in court. 

Apparently, Ryan wasn’t going to go down without dragging as many of his own bosses with him. Tris was just glad that somebody had the decency to do it, even if it was General Ivy. 

Everybody from the city who could had to testify. Even Uriah, who had needed half of his scull removed after being hit with a falling wall, had been wheeled into court and had given an account of how he’d been poorly treated at the hands of the government officials, especially while he was on the base. 

But, in the end, after about a year of having to testify in front of so many courts over and over, the final verdict was that all parties were guilty of inhumane treatments of those inside of the city. Those who got the worst sentences were the ones who’d been in the highest positions of power. General Ivy nor former President Addis would ever see the outside of a maximum security prison again in their lives. 

The day that the final verdict was announced, everybody celebrated. But the people who had the most to celebrate where Tris and Eric, who had decided to get married after everything was officially over. 

* * *

“There you are!” Eric exclaimed as he poked his head up through the hatch in the roof. Tris was sitting next to it, with her knees drawn up to her chest. She had been watching the sunset. “I was looking all over for you. I don’t know what drove me to want to live in a house with, not only my own parents and your parents, but also Elizabeth, Caleb, and Susan.” He heaved a frustrated sigh. “I mean, I suppose that I like Caleb a lot more now than when I first met him, but I’m really regretting Susan right now.”

“I can assure you that she’s not usually like that,” Tris said gently. “It’s the pregnancy hormones talking.”

“Trust me, I know. That’s why I came up here— not really to find you, but since you are up here…” Eric trailed off. 

“Me, too,” Tris agreed with a roll of her eyes. 

Eric heaved himself fully up onto the roof and sat down next to her so that their shoulders were touching. They sat for a moment in silence, just watching the last few minutes of the sunset. 

“I hope that Susan’s anger isn’t very off-putting for you, though,” Tris said slowly. 

“It’s frustrating sometimes, but I’ve learned very fast just to get the hell out of her way whenever she’s around,” Eric said a bit bitterly. 

“Well,” Tris said, drawing the word out. “I just only hope that you’ll be as attentive towards me when it’s our turn.”

Eric’s sharp gaze instantly softened. “Of course I will. You know that, and I’m wounded that you’d even have to ask.”

Tris gave him a slow smile. “Well, I guess that we’ll all find out how attentive that you are very soon.”

“Wait… What?” He gave her a look that was a mixture of horror and wonder. Tris didn’t say anything, and just kept smiling at him. “Are you sure?”

“No,” she said slowly. She broke his gaze and looked down at the tops of her knees. “It’s just a hunch. But we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and you know how far away we are from the nearest doctor. But I missed two periods, and then I talked to both Susan and my mom about it. They both reassured me that I’d know. And… I think that I know.”

“Holy shit, Tris! You shouldn’t even be up on the roof right now! Do you know how steep this angle is? You could slip off and get hurt!” Eric exclaimed as he jumped to his feet. “Shit, what the hell am I doing up here? We need to get you back inside!”

“Eric!” Tris said as she got to her feet, too. 

“You shouldn’t even be working in the fields anymore! Or tending to the animals! You shouldn’t be on your feet at all!” Eric went on.

“ERIC!” Tris practically screamed. He trailed off in his rant, and looked over to her. She cupped his face with her hands, and leaned up to kiss him. “I love you, but you’re being stupid right now. Let’s go back inside and call the doctor. I don’t even know for sure, not one-hundred percent anyway.”

“Yes… yes,” Eric said absently. He nodded slightly, in a complete daze. “Let’s call the doctor. But if you say that you’re sure, then I believe you.” He opened up the hatch again, and jumped down into the attic. Then, he turned around to help Tris down. Once both of her feet were on the floor, he spun her around and kissed her soundly. 

“I never thought that we’d get to this point, but I’m glad that we have.”

“Yes,” Tris said. “Even though we all still have nightmares, we’re finally able to put Divided City far, far behind us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final shout out to eruditeprincess1993 for helping me to proofread everything. And to all of my lovely readers for sticking by this story, even when I vanished for months without any real update!
> 
> If anybody's interested in seeing more of my stuff, I will likely be starting another Labryinth fic (on ff.net, if any of you follow me on there, it's on my other account.)
> 
> Until next time!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, please let me know if you spotted any grammatical errors so that I can fix them.
> 
> And, if you enjoyed reading this, please let me know in a review or by leaving some kudos. They're always appreciated.


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